


Pretty in Punk

by feldman, Thassalia



Series: John Hughes AU [4]
Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:31:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set eleven years after "The Peacekeeper Wars": fourth story in the John Hughes AU written with Thassalia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty in Punk

"Once upon a time..."

"Dude," D'Argo humphs, annoyed. "Just tell me the frelling story, dad."

John makes a noise halfway between a snort and a stifled bark of laughter. "Okay, okay."

He clears his throat and looks at his son, dark hair falling over his eyes as he bends over a set of complex vector problems, ticking off flight ratios and gravity aspects as he reaches for an equation at the end of the limit. Calc at thirteen because he'd breezed through geometry and trig and he needed 3D math more than good old Pythagoras.

Pride hits him with a low blow, hard and tight like a heart attack and he wishes Aeryn were here to share this moment, to see their kid with his mind racing like a hamster wheel, impatient with his dad, impatient with the utter slowness of the adults in his orbit. It was such a good thing. "So we had you, and the universe signed a deal to not destroy itself because of a few bad play dates, and then we were kind of jobless. Which was good."

D'Argo isn't really paying attention, used to his dad's chatter as white noise, and John knows he can thread some truth in among the softened edges of his story.

"Once upon a time..." He says, low and lulling, halfway under his breath. "There was a man and a woman and they had a child and they didn't destroy the universe." His voice picks up tone and speed. "And once they had the whole baby thing figured out, minimizing the risk, learning out how to shop and keep track of the kid, how to live in a giant living ship that could grow baby guards but still had weird crap on the floors that the little boy liked to put in his mouth, much to the disgust of his mom--but what does she know, she still thinks food cubes are actual food--the man and the woman decided they needed jobs."

"Dude, that makes no sense."

"Stop interrupting. Anyway, we did need jobs. Your mom was going stir crazy, and piracy wasn't very profitable and neither was hauling cargo, and our house wanted to go explore the not so safe regions of distant space and we'd ended up on a planet with a seriously fucked up caste system."

"Ha! My point. You owe me a krindar."

"Nope, the swear word equals money policy went out the window last time Chi taught you something obscene in Luxan and you used it at a state dinner."

"Dren. But it was the Xylians, right?"

"A whole race of the dispossessed," he says, soft now. "People who'd had a government, had some equity and some order, a structure of their own and had been enslaved and then abandoned by one of the Peacekeeper's less than ethical allies. And we were in the weird position of being able to help. They were just a small band of fighters really, and they just wanted a few tactics in exchange for giving us some sanctuary. Your mom voted yes, and I voted okay if we have to."

"Mom taught 'em to shoot and blow things up."

"No, not so much." John rubs his lip, remembering, still thinking of the time with a soft distant haze of fear and awe. "She taught them how to be quiet, how to look, lurk and listen, and to strike only when necessary. To walk softly and carry a big pulse cannon. To only fight for what they believed in if the outcome had a chance of being better than the current situation. It could have a been a disaster, but it turned out okay."

"Why didn't you want to help?"

"I didn't want any of us to get hurt, didn't want them to die or us to get arrested, didn't want to take the risk of helping people whose story we didn't know."

"So why did you?"

D' has abandoned the vectors for the moment to look at John with serious grey eyes. After a few microts have passed he says, "Families," sussing out the answer on his own.

John nods. "Families. Like us, just with bigger mouths and weird eyes. But people who deserved a chance at rebuilding and self determination. And if my wife wanted to be the one to help them with the determining, I wasn't gonna say no."

"It's kind of cool." D'Argo twirls his stylus, turning back to his math.

Yeah, John thinks. It is.

 

Even on its best day Keratos was dry and dusty, a grey haze filtering over the small community of planets, choking the life out of anything not kiris grain or protected in sealed hydroponic reserves, and she's mostly forgotten the feel of grass, even the simulated kind here on the recreation deck of a refurbished command carrier.

She's spent six weekens making nascent combat fighters out of undisciplined civilians and amateur militia, time spent frustrated and challenged, her and a few staff a heart of order amidst the chaos of a developing organization. She's been fighting off a searing headache for the last ten days, no doubt the result of spending most of her time away in space, eating bad food even by her standards, sleeping in metal bunks, and repeating herself to resistant weeken-warriors.

She knew she'd grown soft living on Moya, but finds that she minds that less than she should. She has missed her bed, missed her husband and her son, and it's been a long six weekens since she's seen either of them.

She lingers a few more microts under the ultraviolet sim, enjoying the momentary peace and quiet of the deck, soaking up the light and greenery freshened air. Voices carry in the light fan breeze, a child's shout, grownup laughter, and she is unable to wait any longer.

Aeryn comes up over the ridge of grass, making her way to the building that houses the training pool, butted up to the massive bulkhead at the very edge of the lawn. She palms the glass, waiting for it to read her code and slide open with a soft snick, allowing her to slip into the open observation area above the pool. She stands there for a few microts, braced against the railing, to watch the controlled pandemonium inside.

John wears swim trunks and a grey t-shirt, a whistle around his neck and a wide grin. His bare feet pace back and forth along the side of the pool as he yells good-natured insults and honest encouragement to the swimmers. Her belly thrills at the sight of him, her body recognizing his even at the distance, tendrils of lust and tenderness snaking up as if she could already smell him and feel him.

He needs a haircut. Aeryn's hand tightens on the rail. She'd like to slide her mouth against the nape of his neck, to suckle at the salt-sweet of his skin, to feel his heat and weight against hers, his voice in her ear and thrumming through her body. Frell, she's missed him. Her stomach growls, rolls a little, and she wills it still. This is something else that can be dealt with later.

She scans the pool, eyes sharp on the young quick bodies until she finds the one she's looking for - dark hair and pale, freckled skin, gangly frame cutting cleanly through the water. Her heart beats hard, thudding in her chest, full with her pride, with the presence of her love. Difficult to believe, even here and even now, that these two are hers.

The knowledge that she would do anything to keep them safe is a tenet of her daily existence, a solid presence of thought that she shelters. She couldn't even begin to think of questioning that certainty. But her surety may be tested by the instability of the current peace, showing signs of wear in too many places around the galaxy. Keratos was relatively steady when she left, but they're the newest program, started despite the longest local history of violence yet, and her experience tells her that without commitment on both sides, the program will fail. Things may be more fragile on Keratos, but the problem is endemic.

Sometimes it's easier to fight than to work out the continuing problem of living in peace.

Aeryn tries to push those thoughts aside, thinks about going to wait for her family outside on the grass when John spots her. His eyes go wide and he whistles loud, fingers in his mouth.

"Hey sailor," he calls out. "Lookin' for a hot time?"

She shakes her head, slides her lip into her mouth and runs her teeth along the soft flesh. He puts his hand over his heart and smiles, just for her.

 

D'Argo's hair is still damp, curling raggedly at the ends. He hugs her, reluctant, looking around to make sure that none of the other swimmers can see him but he doesn't back away when she keeps him close, pressing him firmly to her body. He smells like bromine and water and boy. His clothes are a little stale, a little musky. Likely, John's let the laundry slide since she left. She wasn't due back for another two days.

D'Argo pushes out of her grasp and shrugs his satchel more firmly up his shoulder, "Hey Mom."

"Hey, mom." John echoes, coming up behind his son and shaking him gently.

"We're gonna start a team," D'Argo says, then looks longingly at the mixed species group of boys and girls on the hill, all of them gawking at something held in the palm of a small Kai.

"Go," she says. "Three hundred microts though. I'm starving."

John stands over her, looming a little, then brushes his knuckles over her cheek, fingers slipping over her temple, behind her ear and down her neck. She shivers a little, leaning in to the touch.

"Weren't a pack of kids over there, I'd drag you down, ravage you right here." His voice is throaty and she knows he's not exactly joking. "Missed you baby." He slides his hand down to find hers, fingers tangling. "Glad you're home early."

She squeezes his hand. "I've missed you too."

"You look tired."

She shrugs, nods. "Four squads of young recruits, half of whom were un-trainable, the other half barely competent, lead by militia leaders more intent on rebellion than learning. The ones who made it..." She lifts her shoulders.

"Not a lot of faith in the local leadership?"

"It's likely an unworkable situation, John, made worse by the attitudes of the local Peacekeeper garrison. They're supportive to the letter of their orders, threatened and belligerent. They withhold assistance to the militia program and the local government, then are forced to retrench and overcompensate, which ends up just as bad."

"Bureaucratic guerilla tactics." High Command can see the benefit in letting the colonies raise their own militias, another source of warm bodies with guns should the uneasy alliance with the Scarrans crumble, and many colony governments are eager for more autonomy. Most of High Command's perestroika moves have been motivated by the cold war with the Scarrans; nothing like hot lizard breath down your neck to change your point of view on little things like genetic contamination and who should be armed. The guys and gals on the ground have sometimes been harder to convince; the only threat they perceive is to their beloved status quo. "Same as on Menir and Avenicia."

"Posturing and territorial dren." Her fingers ache but she's not willing to let him go, knows that her voice is carrying with too much earnest investment, too much fear for the future, all of it shaded by this new thing she suspects. "Things were stable when I left Keratos, but I doubt it will last."

He nods, face grave, the lines around the corners of his eyes deep. She reaches forward to smooth the delicate skin and he turns his face, kisses her palm.

"Yeah, well, I haven't seen my wife in a hell of a long time. Let's work on saving the universe tomorrow."

 

"Just your luck, to come back on biscuits and gravy night."

Aeryn slides another forkful of sauced hisona-bread into her mouth, soft and familiar, the first thing she's found in over a weeken that doesn't make her stomach roll in protest. They eat at the visiting squadron tables, her son snickering at the other end of the section with the friends he's made on the Carrier.

John's apparently finished eating, abandoning the last square of hisona on his plate in order to watch her. She reaches, snurches, and polishes off his meal as well.

He jokes, "I haven't seen you eat like that since we tucked D'Argo back inside. Food that bad on Keratos?"

She sighs against her full stomach. She'd much rather tell him after she's gotten all the facts but she knows better. She shares her uncertainly reluctantly, but she does share it. "I think I might have fallen pregnant."

For a moment it simply lays on the table between them. D'Argo's laugh carries over the murmur of the other soldiers in the mess, quickly hushed to a furtive snicker that probably only his parents can still pick out. There was a brother years ago, and Aeryn knows that John is thinking of this ghost child, the infant Aeryn couldn't give life to, the one who instead nearly dragged her into death along with him. Geometric pregnancy was more dangerous than they'd realized, when the father isn't carrier born.

D'Argo had been six, and nearly orphaned. They had decided against the risk and taken precautions accordingly.

John clears his throat. "I thought the implant was supposed to keep that from happening?"

"I don't know for sure." She shrugs, eyeing the plate before her and trying not to pick it up to lick off the sauce. "But if so, then it failed."

"Medbay?"

"That was my plan."

"I'll let D' know we're running errands, then."

Aeryn nods, swiping her finger through the puddle of sauce as John talks to their son.

 

"Your dad has a singularity of focus that is very rare."

"You mean stubborn, right?" They sprawl out on the big sleeping platform, neither of them interested in working at the tiny console desk.

"I was trying to be nice, but yes, that's part of what I meant. It's not just stubbornness, though. He's focused. You've worked the sensors on our shuttle pod, the way you can lever down the field to a tight beam and only display that small section of space? Your dad is like that, he can narrow down to the most important things and keep priority on them no matter what else is happening around him."

D'Argo tucks a socked foot under hers, datapad clicking in automatic shutoff. "Like what?"

"Oh, the usual distractions." She sets her own work aside, shoving a pillow under her as she props her head on her hand. "Political crises, shipboard emergencies. Pulse blasts."

"Like when I was born."

"Exactly. Nothing else mattered but you and me at that point. Then all that mattered was getting back to Moya."

Her son nods. It's his story after all, he could probably tell it himself, at least the birth and the firefight. The bigger picture is still vague, the fact that his father nearly wiped out the universe and that his mother had put the weapon in his hand, that his home ship provided the seed energy for the ultimate ultimatum--that he almost lived his whole lifetime in less than a day, these are details they haven't given him yet. He smiles at her.

"It's the bigger picture that he sometimes has a problem with. You can focus on a small thing, but you can never take it out of the greater context. You have to account for the universe, fit yourself into it. Sometimes you have to act for the greater good."

"Dad doesn't like to get involved."

"He comes around to it eventually. There's no one I'd rather have on my side."

 

"How?" John goes pale and then flushes red.

She loves him, she honestly does, and she hasn't seen him in a very long time and she reminds herself of these facts as she clenches and unclenches her fists. He told her once that there were no stupid questions. She didn't agree with him then, and he proves her point now.

The medtech shrugs. "It happens. Not often, but... We can only guarantee its effectiveness when both parties are Sebacean." She tries not to roll her eyes at the universal eema covering of the medical establishment. The tech continues. "When was the last time you had it checked?"

John looks at her for an answer and she shrugs.

"A cycle ago, most likely. I don't remember offhand." A cycle sounds right though, the last time she'd had any sort of check-up at a facility equipped for the needs of shipborn Peacekeepers.

"It happens, that's all you're giving us?"

John's clearly still fixated on the ridiculous, his shoulders a hard, rigid line. Her headache beats behind her eyes like the aftershocks of a pulse blast.

The med tech ignores him, looks at Aeryn. "The implant has slowed down the growth of the fetus. You'll need to have it removed in order for the growth to continue, but you need to make a decision soon. Otherwise, it won't be viable."

She nods, pain searing behind her eyes. This was not the homecoming she'd anticipated.

The tech looks over his data pad. "The tests say the fetus is female, currently healthy. But it will grow geometrically once the implant is removed and it looks like you've had some...difficulties with that sort of pregnancy in the past. That is something to consider."

"Thank you," she says absently, and gets off the table, reaching past John for her coat.

He doesn't say anything until they're outside the facility.

"Feels like we've been here before." His voice is soft, but not quite kind.

She nods, walking beside him, their strides matching. She doesn't want to think about this now. She wants a shower, sleep, more food, time with her son, time naked and sweating with her husband. She doesn't want a fight. She's not certain of whether or not she wants another child. But when had the universe been terribly cognizant of her wants?

That aside, what she needs right now is something more than John's fears. "Where are your quarters?"

"Aeryn, we need to talk about this."

She stops in the middle of the hallway, turns to face him. "Yes. But..." she rubs at the bridge of her nose, breathes out heavily, "later."

His eyes darken with stubborn resolve, worse than a dhoiesin with a rodent. He's unable to let things go, a lasting after-effect of their early years together, their shared history as much curse as blessing at times.

He bites his lip, eyes sweeping up and down her body, and relents. "Later, then."

They walk a circuitous route up through the tiers until they reach a level of converted officer's quarters. John palms the door, and she steps in. The red and black has been replaced by cooler tones, blues and pale yellows, wax candles tucked into nooks. It's ridiculously clean for any place that John has occupied for six weekens, and a half smile tugs at her mouth. He's cleaned it for her arrival. A lone sock peeks out from under the bed, but the covers are pulled up, tucked around the bed neatly and the room smells like clean sheets and citrus.

She knows better than to look in any of the drawers, but it's the thought that counts.

She turns towards him and he reaches for the zipper on her tight uniform coat, slides it down and carefully slips the coat off her shoulders, laying it over the small table.

She takes her hair down, some of the tension leaching out of her neck, the headache receding slightly. She leans over to undo her boots while he watches, takes off her socks and stands, meeting his gaze.

They stand barefoot and consider each other, this new thing still between them the same as at dinner, only now it's tangible, a barrier. She'd said later, but now that the pregnancy is a fact she's having a hard time shoving it aside for later. She strides toward him and gives him a hard push onto the bed, falling with him, limbs hooking and tangling.

She breathes in the scent of him, the scent of home underneath the bromine from the pool. He buries his face in her hair and pulls her close.

She'd planned on frelling his brains out when she got home. It turns out differently, feels more like a goodbye than a return. Afterward they shower and dress, aware that the boy could show up at any microt. He sits back against the black headboard and tucks her between his legs, arms wrapped around her, cheek resting against hers.

It's later, but she doesn't know how to begin, so she tells him, "Talk to me."

He breathes deep but doesn't speak for a moment. "I figure we've already had this discussion. We decided not to take the risk."

"And now?"

"No different."

She pulls herself from his embrace to face him fully. "Of course this is different."

"The risk is the same, Aeryn. You dying."

"You'd terminate."

"I'd love to have another kid, you know that." He scrubs his face with one hand. "But we've already learned to live without that possibility because it's too damned dangerous."

"You act as if we know how it will turn out. I had no trouble with D'Argo."

"And the second baby almost killed you. That's a pretty big odds spread."

"We're on a Command Carrier with a full complement of med personnel."

"And we were leaving as soon as you came back."

"Plans can change."

"We're not talking about what to have for dinner here, Aeryn, we're talking about life and d--"

They turn as the door slides open.

D'Argo stops just inside, eyeing them warily. If he had antennae they'd be vibrating.

"I've got a boatload of grading to catch up on," John stands and gets his shoes, aiming the last bit pointedly at Aeryn, "why don't you spend some quality time with your son? He's missed his mom."

 

Her son has so much of John in him. She has to take a step back when they go round the bend and he pauses, gives her a look both thrilled and dubious, vibrating with curiosity, but holding himself in check like he's waiting to gauge her reaction.

Is she really ready to navigate the personality of another child, another example of her genes mingling with John's? Yes, she thinks. She wants an antidote to the strife out there, wants another example of the things she and John do well to shine forth.

She knows better than to put an arm around her son, to show the easy affection that he used to accept as a boy, but it doesn't still the itch in her fingers to stroke his hair, examine him for unseen hurts, to ask if he's changed his socks since she left.

 

But he also has John's easy generosity and the knowledge that his mother is slightly cooler than other kid's mothers. Or at least so she's been told. She's fairly certain he's introduced the "cool" into his peer group; the fact that it's an incredibly vulgar word in Hynerian helped to spread its popularity.

"Kai-sen's dad came in on a new ship," he says, settling back into his young body, his expression finally matching his age. "Wanna see it?"

"Yes," she says. "I'd love to."

He practically quivers in joy as he explains the ins and outs of the Kirilian flier, how fast, how far, how much G-force, the microts between punching the accelerator and feeling it jump, faster than hetch but not quite a speed that bends time.

When he was ten she had to tell him that he couldn't fly combat; she'd known for cycles that he didn't have the reflex speed, and the sooner he accepted it the better. It didn't matter so much then, except to him. Aside from a few minor skirmishes at the borders of the Uncharted Territories, peace was holding. Now, it might matter, to more than a solemn eyed little boy who'd watched his dreams deteriorate. That had been the last major fight she'd had with John. She had a feeling that it would seem minor in comparison to what they were gearing up for.

"Kai-sen said his dad might give us a ride. That'd be so cool. I told him you could still kick his dad's ass in your Prowler though."

He's bouncing on his toes, mouth wide and a little devious. She'd lay odds he had a bet riding on it, an exchange of something infinitely precious, maybe even that game box he'd been ogling earlier in Kai-sen's hands.

"That ship's very fast," she says, eyeing its clean lines.

"Yeah," says her son, smile wolfish and sweet. "But it's you flying the Prowler."

She's done business with the Kai cooperative a few times before, and found Kai-tyil (Kai-sen's father, for lack of a better Sebacean term for the being from which Kai-sen had budded) more arrogant than his skill warranted. She runs a hand along the Kirilian flier's hull. "Is Kai-tyil aware of this wager?"

D'Argo gleefully fidgets. Aeryn takes that as a yes.

"And the ratings in your current training modules?"

He rattles off acceptable ratings for his level, though he could be doing better in the history and culture modules if he weren't so enthralled with maths. Didn't get the reflexes, but he's not short on brains.

"Hmmm." She knows that the Carrier has docked into a still position for the next few days. If they're still operating on standard procedure--and small things like that seem to be the most entrenched even after the recent changes in Peacekeeper discipline--slalom beacons will have been set up for the practice of flight squads. She hums again.

"Well?"

"What do I get out of it if we win?"

He tosses back to her one of her well-worn phrases, unable to control the smirk. "Pride in a job well done?"

She musses his hair roughly, using it as an excuse to touch him in public. "I'll see what I can arrange with the deck officer."

The smirk blooms into a grin, and she responds with not only a smile but a gift.

"I think this one time, considering your stake in the venture, you can ride in the jump seat."

His whoop bounces off the distant bulkheads, putting everyone in the cavernous bay on alert.

She corrals him, pulling him close and stilling him. "Remember where we are."

Chagrined, he forgets to squirm out of her embrace, and they walk out of the docking bay with her arm draped over his shoulders.

His hair is darkening, and she thinks he might have grown a few denches since she left. Only six weekens, but she can see the changes. How long before game consoles are replaced by more physical kinds of recreation and more tangible challenges; how long before he's no longer a boy, but a young man making his own way in the universe?

He's the only one of his kind.

Aeryn remembers her visits to Earth, seeing John's family through the perspective of time, parents and children. Siblings. She might have genetic siblings in the Peacekeepers, perhaps even on this carrier, other soldiers sired by Talyn before he decided to make an illicit child with Xhalax, but she has no brothers, no sisters. What she knows of it comes mainly from Chiana and from John.

She could give D'Argo a sibling. A sister. She's already been made, she just needs to be kept. Or discarded. John thinks that it's a choice between who dies, her or the child, perhaps both.

Aeryn isn't convinced it's that dire of a risk, isn't convinced she shouldn't take the chance. D'Argo was a chance she took from the moment she found out about him, aboard a Command Carrier just like this, one that wouldn't exist a mere handful of days later.

If she ever takes that risk again, her chance is right now.

But, for the moment, she's willing to focus on slimmer chances.

It takes less than an arn to inform the techs responsible for monitoring the slalom lines and to issue a slightly more formal challenge to Kai-tyil. She and her son are strapped into the Prowler before she can change her mind, launching out of the hanger bay to round the first set of marks.

He bounces in the jump seat behind her, bony keens jamming into the back of the pilot seat. "C'mon, c'mon. He's gonna beat us."

She smiles. "D'Argo, it's hardly a risk. Don't worry so much."

It's been cycles since she's participated in this sort of venture, betting her skill against another pilot's and she knows in her bones that it's barely a challenge. The Kai's ship is beautiful, fast and capable, but it's a travesty to put that sort of power in the hands of someone who can't fly his way out of his own eema.

"Better to bide our time, make him think he can win," she counsels as she gently taps the thrusters. "It's all part of the game."

He taps on the seat, drumming out a rhythm of nervous exhilaration, and when Kai-tyil gets just far enough ahead to convince him of his victory, she hits her thrusters, flies full out, uses her acceleration and his lack of knowledge to tear around the 3rd quarter slalom.

Nervous, her competitor falters around the bend and she grins, laughs and slides effortlessly under his ship, coming up from underneath to leave him in her wake.

Power and speed, G-forces pressing on them hard enough for her son to whoop breathlessly as they race past the finish line with enough momentum to push the monitoring marauder back until it's denches away from the Carrier. She gives her own brief yell of victory and amusement, body singing with the thrill of pure flight.

 

"Dude, Mom, that was so frelling cool!" He drops onto the deck, still flying on the rush of the win, still coasting high on speed and thrust and his mom kicking Kai-sen's dad's *ass* in the race, still dizzy from the acceleration and inertia, his body far less familiar with the principles his mind can calculate with ease.

She corrals him with a firm grip on his collar, neatly keeping him from stumbling across the deck and he grins at her, feels like his smile is a beam lighting across his face and shining back from hers. For a moment he basks in that answering grin, her approval thrumming through him.

He can't contain himself, gives a little hop to loosen her grip, wants to run across the docking bay. He settles for hooting a battle cry, victory echoing in the bay like it does in the pool arena. He spots Kai-sen over in the corner crowd, near his dad and a small group of allied guests. He knows most of them by sight, parents of other telacademy kids mostly, but not all. The elder Kai looks disgruntled, a little angry, but not terribly surprised.

"Got beat bad," the large Scorvian says, tentacles lying thick and fat against his head as he razzes the Kai.

"Frell you," he growls back, a good-natured smirk tempering the venom.

D'Argo slides into Kai-sen, punching him lightly on a ventral arm, unable to resist adding, "Told you. She's the best pilot around."

Kai-tyil grunts, and raises his odd ridged eyes at Aeryn's approach.

"It's a beautiful ship," she says again, slipping her strong fingers back into D'Argo's collar and jerking him to a standstill.

It's probably a good thing, since Kai-sen looks hot and flushed, humid in a way that suggests anger, maybe embarrassment. Good, D'Argo thinks, see how you like it. Kai-sen slides a hand over the place where D'Argo tapped his arm and a flash of shame settles him into his mother's grip for a few microts. He gives Kai-sen a tentative grin. We still friends?

Kai-sen rolls his eyes in his father's direction. Yeah, still friends.

Meanwhile, the father is still speechless, moving his mouth around in a way that says more about his petulance than any sort of gracious losing. Finally he says, “Should never have bet with a Peacekeeper."

"I'm not a Peacekeeper anymore," Aeryn says, voice steely smooth, level, almost amused.

Across the hangar, D'Argo spots two of the PK guards who were monitoring the slaloms. One of them had given them all the go ahead to race.

"No," Kai-tyil says slowly, and with great deliberation. "You aren't a Peacekeeper now." His eyes shift to the gun on Aeryn's thigh. D'Argo traces the glance, looks up at his mom who doesn't show much of anything.

"It doesn't much matter what you think of me," she says. "As long as you don't renege on the bet."

Kai-tyil lays two hands on his chest and sketches a bow. "Never would have occurred to me."

"She's the best pilot on this ship," D'Argo says, wriggling. She lets him go with a slight shake.

Kai-tyil chews his lower lip. "Yes. She probably is."

The PK's are much closer know, close enough to hear the last exchange but Kai-tyil ignores them. "I'll take the children out sometime in the next few days," he says. With a raised eye ridge he adds, "They should have the chance to see the interior amenities and superior capabilities of a first class ship."

"Yes," Aeryn doesn't respond to the dig. "They should."

One of the PKs barks out a laugh, stopping in front of the group. "Seems a waste for a backwater treznot like you to own a fine ship like that."

The tension in the air shifts, ramps up to serious instead of joking and uneasy.

"At least I'm not stuck on a declassified piece of dren command carrier," Kai-tyil hisses back and the PK puffs up like a Hynerian's first course.

D'Argo feels his mother tug ever so gently at his collar, a signal to leave at the first opportunity. She doesn't correct the Kai, doesn't try to explain how the handful of xeno-classification carriers in the PK fleet might have older equipment, but they're far from decommissioned. They should all know this, it's part of the allied treaties but no one speaks up, they all just let the insult stand, watching.

"Got your eema squashed by a piece of dren Peacekeeper vessel," the PK finally says, voice low in his throat and chest, body unnaturally still. "So I'd be careful about what you insult around here."

"Frell you," Kai-tyil clenches his fists. The threat in the room has clicked higher, no trace left of the joking of a moment before.

D'Argo shifts for a better look, backing into his mom, feet angled toward the doors. She clears her throat, subtle but loud in the tense stillness.

"It was an unfair race," she says, her tone suggesting it was nothing of the kind, but good-naturedly. "I'm a trained pilot and I've been flying combat for most of my life. But it is a beautiful ship."

Neither side is placated. The quiet PK taps his rifle against his breast plate and gives Aeryn and D'Argo a studying look. His mom rests her other hand on her gun and holds her position, her fingers in his collar steady, one thumb caressing the back of his neck, soothing. The air thins, a triangulation of rage and calculation between the soldiers, Kai-tyil and his friends, and Aeryn, each representing their own space, their own interests.

Usually, D'Argo feels at home with telacademy kids, but right now, he feels how much distance there is between himself and his folks, and everyone else on the carrier. No one else without PK rank wears a gun. Only Aeryn Sun. Not even his dad has that privilege, although it doesn't seem to bother him much.

The quiet one speaks, voice soft and chiding. "Shouldn't be hanging around these lowlife civilians, Officer Sun.”

"They might say the same thing about you," she replies, carefully with an edge of ice, but she doesn't correct the rank. "Or maybe they agree." She shrugs. D'Argo looks to Kai-sen, but his friend won't break his stare down at the deck, face flushed dark, temples wet with emotion.

"Officer Tarka, Sub-Officer Du!"

Both commandos straighten, do a military about face at the voice of their superior.

"Back to your stations," he barks. "These...guests deserve all the courtesies they are afforded. But I want a full report on why you decided it was acceptable to allow a...contest to be conducted in the training space!"

The lieutenant pauses as his two guards march back to their stations, then turns to Aeryn. "I take it you won."

D'Argo whoops again, as much from the release of tension as from the win.

The lieutenant grunts and turns abruptly, ignoring the rest of the assembled crowd.

Aeryn pushes gently at D'Argo's back and he gets the message. He finally catches Kai-sen's eyes and shares a rolled-eyed smile, then jogs forward.

 

John keys off his console as Aeryn pulls off her boots. "I heard you were draggin' on the strip."

"Dragging what?"

"Dragging a Kai's ass across the floor and handing it to him."

She smiles wicked and fast.

"I had to peel the boy from the ceiling; I thought he wasn't pilot material?"

"We have an understanding, this was something special we shared."

"A one-time deal."

"Yes." The next part comes out as more of a challenge than she'd meant. "He bet on me and I wanted him there when he won."

"With your skill it's a sucker's bet." He moves a stack of flimsies aside and sets his forearm across the desk. "Listen, I can't tell you what to do with this. It's your body and your decision. It's always been."

She sits down on the bed, the last dregs of excitement dissolving.

"But there's a lot riding on this decision, and you're risking more than yourself. You're risking our whole family."

She props her elbows on her knees, hands dangling in the air between her thighs. Her first pregnancy was a haze of danger, food and sleep, ending in a paroxysm of determination and fear. Her second pregnancy started more pleasantly and ended much worse. She realizes now that if she decides to have the implant removed and not the embryo, the physical danger could be nothing compared to how much she'll hurt John. He's scared.

He rubs the back of his neck and unlaces his boots, strips off his pants without looking at her.

She doesn't want this fight, doesn't want to level pain on him, and for a few microts at least she allows herself the luxury of watching him, his grace and the way he pulls into himself, his antidote to offering her a decision he desperately wants a part of.

He hikes his shirt off over the back of his head and then stands, stretching out his back, body long and lovely and mostly bare for her perusal.

He finally catches her eye, mouth tilting up with effort. "Seein' something you like?"

She undresses, pants and shirt folded and placed on a chair, bra and shorts stripped off and she pulls back the covers, crawling in between the sheets. "Clean?"

"I do occasionally get around to the laundry, ya know"

She laughs, low and rich. "You've been saving them until I came back haven't you?"

He smiles, still a little distant, a little angry and martyred but six weekens were six weekens and it's been a long separation.

She pulls the sheet up over her breasts, stretches her arms above her head and pops her back, propping her hands behind her head.

It's too much for him and he crawls over the covers, straddles her hips and wraps his hands around her upper arms, thumbs pressing into the delicate flesh layered over her triceps, pressing her arms back into the pillows.

"Been gone a long time, baby."

She looks up at him, layers of conflicting emotion lacing her reactions. She wants him, wants his body wrapped around hers, his heat and his weight, his easy love and his uneasy approval. Frell. This is not how she wanted to come home, bringing up old hurts and old wounds and decisions that shouldn't feel like a lancing, should feel like joy or care or something warm. Not like this, not like being alone and desperate and searching.

"I'm not ready to concede, and I'm not ready to decide," she says, meeting his eyes.

"I know it's not easy." His eyes are dark, mouth far less sweet than she'd like.

"It's never easy." The rule of their continued existence.

"Yeah." But he can't help himself, he leans down, letting his weight go slack, pushing her into the mattress and kisses her. His lips are warm, sweet and musky and she shrugs out of his grip, slides hands into his hair, an arm around his neck pulling him so tight he makes a slight noise, a pain pleasure gasp of surprise.

His body responds, hardening against her thigh, enticing her through the sheets and she slides her hands down his back, reveling in the feel of his skin, the muscle and bone underneath, conscious that something of the two of them rests inside her, waiting for its fate. He groans again, grinding his hips against her, whispering desire against her neck, whispering need and anger and moments spent resentfully apart until she rolls on top of him. The sheet is shoved down and she takes him inside her body with very little preamble, thrusting against him until their cries rise up between them, desperate and wanton and full of the cycles and moments they've shared.

She collapses on his chest, spent and still uncertain, still wanting one thing and knowing that the choice holds so much more resonance than she wants to believe.

She goes to sleep sated and thoughtful, mindful of the life she's been living with her husband and son. She wakes up furious.

 

Her husband never gets up first, always has to be poked and prodded and taunted out of bed. He's learned how to be a soldier but not to live like one. Their son is the same way, rooting into his pillow in the morning, willfully ignoring her until he resentfully tumbles out of the bed to start his day.

It's just an everyday part of their lives, this small bit of routine, and she's been known to let John bemuse her into staying put, staying tucked into the sheets with him, against his body and his warmth, enjoying the first early morning stirs of their mingled desire and the slow, seductive stoking of it.

Last night she'd dreamt of water and of children, of a firefight with everything at stake, memories and possibilities chasing her through the night cycle. She woke just as torn in the decisions stretching out before them, antsy and frustrated with John for laying the choice at her feet and looking at her with the weight of all his want and resentment and concern, expecting her to just take everything up, somehow make a decision they could all live with.

She'd wanted to wake up to him lying next to her, wanted to watch his chest rise and fall, watch him dream behind soft lids, wanted to trace the lines of his back and shoulders while he slept, feel him banked and quiet and hers, maybe wake him up with kindness and sex. She remembers this from the second pregnancy, the insatiability of her appetites, for food, for flight, for frelling.

His absence pushes at her, stokes her anger. He's avoiding her, avoiding the issue. She does not want to make this decision alone, nor does she want to have to navigate John's coping mechanisms while doing so. Coupling that with the fact that she hasn't been back a day, that he couldn't even wake her to say good morning or good bye or I'll see you at lunch and she feels the heat and burn of rage tingling in her muscles.

That she understands his need for space and solitude, his desire to avoid the issue doesn't make it better.

She gets out of the bed, fumbling on the table opposite for her comm, for her weapon, for anything to help tamp down some of this rage. She barks her shin on the chair and the pain slices up and out and through and she breathes past it, swearing and growling, comes through the other side calmer, more in control.

First things first, she needs to find her husband. She showers, dresses and finally checks the carrier broadcasts and realizes that some of her anger is unjustified. It's practically mid-morning. She hasn't slept that long since... Frell.

She has some time, can get a light morning meal, find the gym and pound on something non-sentient for a while, perhaps see the med tech again. John and D'Argo would both be in class until mid-afternoon, the final lessons of the term. She will seek them out when she's done, has time perhaps to plan something for the three of them to do to celebrate the completion of the courses. She braids her hair, straps on her weapon. She has special dispensation to wear it here, something not granted to everyone and she is still enough of a soldier to take advantage of her special status.

She strokes the barrel of the pistol, roughly amused for a microt at the dichotomy of her life, her gun at hand, thoughts of cakes and gifts mingling in her mind, layering over the larger, heavier issues of life and death and the fracturing peace outside the safety of this carrier.

She is not displeased with this revelation, with the small moments she's found in this larger picture.

 

D'Argo runs along ahead, game console shoved into his pocket, having spotted not only the gold blanket spread out on the grass but the thermal case next to where his mother sits cross-legged with a datapad in her hand. School's out for summer, or at least for a weeken or two for the non-Carrier kids like D'Argo. The ship's kids have simply switched to a heavier load of military training modules.

His kid ain't military, so he gets to wallow in a basket of fried gondrila in the grass. Aeryn smiles up at him as he stops at the edge of the blanket, but he sees that it doesn't reach her eyes. She turns back to D'Argo. "And the object of this game?"

"You tweak your Sprek so that they're better survivors, but when you level the terrain changes, and they have to evolve again. Kai-sen and I are patched in and I've been beating the snot out of him since last night, three levels ago."

John reaches into the thermal case and pulls out a gondrila haunch, settling onto the blanket to watch the two of them huddle over the game console. He's heard about Sprek for six weekens straight, and his enthusiasm for educational games has waned accordingly, but seeing the two of them together, mother and son under artificial sun and breeze, soothes him.

"And this one?"

"It's another Sprek; it's one I modified for a predator niche, isn't he cool?"

"The teeth are impressive, but his hindquarters are very vulnerable."

D'Argo's brow scrunches in an echo of his mother's as he works the keys of the console. Hard to argue with good tactics. Game well in hand, he sets down the console and starts helping John demolish the picnic basket.

Aeryn picks but doesn't eat. When D'Argo's had his fill of food and family, John lets him free with the minimum reminders of good behavior and lights-out time.

She watches the boy disappear over the knoll, then waits another moment before she speaks. "I went to the med bay this morning."

John moves next to her, laying an arm over her shoulders and pulling her close. It was a hard decision to make, but it was the only real choice. He wishes she'd have waited and let him be there with her, but done is done. He inhales the scent of her hair and then kisses her head. "Oh, babe. I'm sorry."

"The implant has failed completely. I need to make a decision by tomorrow night at the latest."

The gondrila turns solid and cold in his stomach. A part of him suspects where this is heading, has always sensed that her indecision isn't genuine, but merely a feint for his benefit while she softens him up to do what she wants.

She pulls away, sits straight and looks him in the eye. "I spoke with the techs about what I'd need to see this through--"

He stands, knees popping. "No."

She looks incredulous, mouth open in the middle of a word. He presses the advantage.

"I can't let you do this. I won't stand by and let you take this risk."

She looks up at him, defiance gathering. "She's already growing at a geometric rate--"

"There is no 'she', Aeryn--this is about you and me and our son. We need you, us, right here in the flesh. You've been gone for six weeks, you may think we can get along fine without you, but I swear to God if you let this pregnancy kill you I'll--"

It's the look on her face, the direction of her eyes that stops him cold. John spots the game console on the blanket and then turns, straightening.

D'Argo becomes paler as he stands rooted, slotting what he'd heard into place in a visible progression. His eyes flick down toward his mother, become wider still, then track back to John. They weren't telling him for a reason, and now that's blown to hell. It's suddenly real in a way that it wasn't before, heavier, harder to carry.

His mother in front of his eyes, or an abstract sister; there's no way out of this without at least one death in the family.

So much for that idyllic childhood they'd worked so hard to provide.

Aeryn stands, game console in hand, and follows after their son, frustration and fury evident in her stride. John doesn't move to join them, doesn't trust her anger to stay contained, to not lash them both. This is a battle as much as anything, and Aeryn is fiercely protective of the boy. Hell, they both are, but a man would have to be stupid to interfere with that Mama bear even if she wasn't packing some serious heat. Papa bear was no exception to that rule and now he'd pissed her off twice.

There wasn't much recourse, and he couldn't dismiss his fear, couldn't ignore the slow rise of anger at what she was willing to risk, at how even now, even this many cycles later, it was still a concession to include him in her decisions. Part of it was lifestyle, so few ways to keep going out here and still find some purpose, some peace. They both get edgy even now, antsy, constantly looking over their collective shoulder, soothed by their son, but never quite at ease.

So Aeryn taught bright-eyed militia boys and girls to fly combat missions, protect their home turfs against the cold war Scarran threat, and he taught Physics and theoretical science and they both played nice with the PKs and the Scarrans when they had to, and avoided the Nebari whenever possible. They stayed out of local land wars, sea wars and star wars. They were the occasional ambassadors for 'not quite as hostile as they used to be' species, but that was only when necessary and only when guilt or favors were involved. Aeryn was good at bargaining political favors, surprisingly--it turned out to be her brand of nice. That was the key to their continued existence. They played nice, played conciliators, and yeah, every once in a while 'nice' broke down and Aeryn got to break some bones and he got to unholster Winona and put the fear of god into some poor shmuck who'd heard the stories and wanted a piece of John Crichton or Aeryn Sun or both.

They lived a good life out here, as good as possible. They were raising a great kid and had stopped running for their lives. Sure, they'd made sure D' knew how to handle a weapon as soon as a suitable one fit his small fingers, knew where to hide and how to run and how to fly if he had to, but hell, those were normal skills for a kid out here. He'd embraced them eagerly, not knowing anything else, bitching and moaning about drills and about chores and practicing, and it was as close to a regular kid life as either of his parents would be able to give him.

And now, she was willing to risk all of that. The fury turned ashy and hot in his mouth. She didn't have the right to risk abandoning them both, no matter what she thought. Her obligations had shifted, to him and to D'Argo, and he couldn't believe that it was so easy for her to take the risk.

He gets up and fold the blanket, stuffing it in the thermal basket and heading off to find his family.

Kai-sen's father is taking some sun on the recreation deck, stretched out on a chair like a lizard in the heat, watching the activities. He grunts in acknowledgement as John walks by, oddly shaped eyes narrowing.

John, pissed off already, can't help seeking out a little restitution. Kai-tyil had been a pain in the eema since they got to the carrier. "Heard my wife beat the pants off of you last night."

Kai-tyil cocks his head, soft drawl of a voice cracking on the words. "We may not be quite done with that bet."

John laughs, bitter and honestly amused. "Kai, don't push Aeryn. You're never gonna beat her, and you're just gonna get your ass handed to you again."

Kai shrugs. The gesture raises John's hackles, but he dismisses the response and keeps walking.

He's not surprised to see them sitting in the stands by the pool. The boy would live in water if he had gills, it's little wonder he headed back to the pool as a safe place.

Aeryn has taken off her coat and sat next to her son, her knee pressed to the long bone of his thigh. They both get still when they're angry or hurt or scared, they both pull up and pull in, expressions grave. His son had his wife's serious intensity and his own need for laughter, and it never ceases to astonish him that he and Aeryn, two forces of destruction, had created something so damn good. Wasn't much he wouldn't do to keep that child safe, give him everything he needed.

"I don't want you to die." His voice breaks a little in his attempt to sound authoritative, to not sound scared.

"I'm not going to."

"Dad said..."

Aeryn blows out her breath, an angry huff of air. "We're making a decision about whether or not to have another child, D'Argo. But I'm not going to take unnecessary risks."

He raises his chin, as stubborn as she is. Aeryn grimaces and rubs her forehead.

"Your bet, yesterday. That was technically riskier than having another child. Anything could have gone wrong, engine failure, thruster malfunctions, in my ship or the other one."

"Yeah," D'Argo says, teenager obvious, "but you were flying."

"Well, I'll be flying this time, too." Aeryn chides him gently, hand on his back soothing up and down as if he were still an infant in a sling.

John circles around to the side of the bleachers, and when he sees the look on her face he knows he's lost the argument. She's going to go through with this.

He meets her gaze over the curved shoulders of their son as the boy takes advantage of the empty natatorium to tuck himself against his mom.

She mouths words to John, and he's heard enough Sebacean from her lips, caught enough words through firefights and in the vacuum of space that he catches her meaning as clear as if she'd whispered it into his ear: "Give me a chance."

John sets his mouth in a grim line. He wonders darkly if it's the challenge that's driving this, if it's more about the time before and proving to herself that she's not only strong enough to endure it, but to face it down again and win. He looks at her, leaning slowly side to side as her son sighs and basks in her touch like a plant in the sun. He feels grief again for his own mom.

It's the way of things for parents to go before you, but his kid is too damned young to bear that.

"Give me a chance." Her eyes are open wide, steady as she goes and that's saying something. If it were only a matter of her will he'd be with her in the med bay right now talking about names.

Her hand skims the arc of the boy's spine like a ship hugging the orbital curve of a planet. "Give me a chance."

He closes his eyes, fists clenched at his sides. He opens them, engraving his mind with the image before him, a sidelong view of Madonna and child in the theme of black hair and lanky limbs.

John sets his boot on the lowest tread and D'Argo flinches his head away from his mom's shoulder, hyperaware of his rep until he spots his father. John sits down beside them, framing the boy between.

He looks at the pool for a long moment, humming a bit of John Lennon to himself as he trudges the first mental steps down the road he didn't want to take. All she is saying, is give her a chance. He turns to them, eyes of storm blue and storm grey watchful. He doesn't wear the pants in his family, but he does have weight. He didn't get to make the decision, didn't get to influence it at all it seems, but he can set the tone.

This might be the end of Aeryn, the last his boy will have of his mom. He can't ruin that.

"We're going to do this as a family." He clears his throat. "She's the pilot on this run, we're her flight crew."

Aeryn leans against their son and John leans back, the boy in the middle caught in both the embrace and a realization. "I'm gonna have a sister."

He sounds so happy, and Aeryn's smile seems equally thrilled. John tries to keep the gravity out of his voice, tamp down the feeling in the pit of his stomach that they're taking a reckless chance. "That's the mission, son. That's the plan."

Despite the fact that they're only allied-guests aboard the xeno-carrier, the med tech and the surgeon give Aeryn the first class Peacekeeper treatment.

John had been expecting something as quick and businesslike as the first examination, but releasing a stasis involves a lot more of the ceremonial paperwork that PKs seem to attach to anything important. He waits at the edge of the cubicle with D'Argo, cooling their heels as Aeryn becomes Queen for the Day, or perhaps Pregnancy Princess for the next six weekens. The actual moment of the embryo's release is hard to spot amid scans, documentation, and the bureaucratic pomp of status transition.

The officer of the day is called in to negotiate the delicacies of Aeryn's strange new position as both allied-guest and actively-gestating. The older woman keys in her codes, imprints her chop, and with a there-but-for-the-grace-of-Cholak nod toward Aeryn goes back to her regular duties.

In exchange for the failed contraceptive implant Aeryn receives boosters, supplements, a schedule of check-in dates; she even gets a chit for uniforms and a special meal ticket, equipment and provisions for her mission.

John is proud of himself for not thinking *suicide* mission. He can be a team player when he has to be.

Over an arn later she hops off the exam table and tucks her temporary ident chip into her shirt. The bandage on her arm from where they dug out the implant is stark green against her regular cream and black. She controls the grin, but John recognizes it as her pre-battle expression, the one that greets the prospect of kicking some ass.

She meets John's gaze, then D'Argo's. "Father. Brother."

Widower. Orphan. John shakes himself, reminds himself again to give her this chance. Daughter. Sister.

When Aeryn scans her new chip in the mess she's issued a regular meal and a gallon of water. The hunger won't start for a few more days, but the thirst is legendary. Toward the end with D'Argo she only woke up to pee, re-hydrate and kick ass. Her water jug attracts a certain kind of distanced respect from the men, and winces of schadenfreude from some of the women.

John hears the word 'throwback', and steers his son a little faster toward the sectioned-off tables.

"They mean us, don't they, Dad."

"Yeah, D', but don't worry about it. It's just a few brown shirts running off at the mouth, that's all. They haven't read the more recent memos from HQ."

"They should play the Sprek game, then they'll find out about variation and hardiness and how you have to keep a deep pool to work with or your Sprek'll die off when you move up to the next level." D'Argo launches into a monologue about Sprek and his best bud/mortal enemy Kai-sen that reassures John of his son's own hardiness.

Aeryn eats with them at a leisurely pace, excluding the greedy gulps with which she drains her jug. Afterward, she takes D'Argo to the docking bay to re-tool her Prowler for dry-dock, and John codes a message for Pilot and Moya.

They won't be meeting up at the rendezvous as soon as they'd planned. John asks them to stay close, if they can. In the worst case, if that happens, he wants to take D'Argo home as quickly as possible.

 

"Ge-ji's guardian's said D' could bunk there for the night," John says. "Have a free-for all in the allied section. Stay up 'til the wee small hours hyped-up on Jolt and video games. There's a bunch of 'em who aren't hanging around for summer school and this is apparently a tradition of sorts."

Aeryn looks at her son, who is caught somewhere in the desire to be with his friends and the need to see things through here with his parents. She is grateful for his love, his concern, but the attachment is still a new thing for her to parse, a child's love for family, her child growing into a man. At his age, she'd been carrying a pulse rifle for cycle, had been testing for combat, and lived with the idea that she was part of a unit and was to fight and die for the glory of that unit. She was loyal to a concept, to the prospect of protection and action. There was no mother, father, brother or sister to cling to, to rebel against, to love. Crechelings, cadets, aren't given things to love that don't lead back to duty, to the Peacekeepers. That's not what she wanted for her son, and yet the niggling disquiet remains.

She worries frequently that they haven't done enough to prepare D'Argo for the harshness of the universe, for the random twists of fate and bad luck. She doesn't want him surprised. But she also doesn't want him living and growing in fear either. They made that decision cycles ago, to keep him safe, to keep him wary and aware and ready for action, but to keep him as innocent as possible considering his parentage, to offer him a life that she'd never had, the kind that John valued as the thing that made him into who he is.

They have the chance now to bring those things to another child, to offer up what they've learned so far, to give some of that love to a new member of their family, and she wants to take that chance, wants to see reflections of John and herself in a girl, wants to give D'Argo more of what John had.

She glances across the communications console at John, at the curve of his skull, the sprinkling of silver hairs around his temples, a few threaded through his hair, lightening it. She resists, for the time being, the urge to smooth her hand over that curve, to hold him against her, to feel the sweet skin of his neck under her fingertips. He's not in a mood to be touched. He would allow it merely to still D'Argo's fears and she doesn't want that. John holds his jaw hard, so much running under the surface of those lines, threading through his strong shoulders, his strong heart. He's angry about this decision, scared. He's putting up a united front for their son, but the two of them are going to have to hash this out while she still has the energy for patience and humor.

"Let's gather your things," Aeryn says finally to her son, as John downloads the rest of their communications onto a chip to read at a later time. He nods, "Mail call's done. Nothing urgent as far as I can see."

D'Argo glances between his folks for a moment and is reassured by Aeryn's smile and by John's nudge against his shoulder. Or perhaps the lure of arns spent devoted to the Sprek game is enough to dissuade him of the idea that his parents are going to do anything he'd be interested in.

On the way back to quarters, Aeryn asks him if Geji has also been working with the Sprek and John barks out a sharp laugh, winning him a matched set of glares from mother and son.

"Ge-ji was top in the class most of the term," D'Argo says, waxing enthusiastic, "but he's too careful. He makes sure that there's depth and breadth, but he's afraid to take chances, so his societies get overly populated, get caught up in the wrong stuff and get wiped out by diseases or other cultures."

He proceeds to launch into a lengthy and complicated explanation of how the Sprek development has evolved between the members of his peer group, an explanation that loses her long before he's gathered pajamas, dentic and a change of clothing for the morning. She glances at John, who leans against the doorway, and he gives her a real grin.

"You asked," he mouths, gleeful and a little taunting. "I've been dealing with this all term."

Ge-ji's guardian has an evening planned for the boys – controlled chaos, a set of boundaries beyond which they are not to leave. Aeryn hears her name whispered, about, shuffled between the gawky angles of adolescent boys and John pokes her in the side with his elbow.

"You made quite a stir last night," Ge-na says. "They're sort of in awe."

Aeryn hides a smile, sees her son nodding to another boy.

"Let's go," John says, low in her ear. "They can't actually tell him his mom's cool when she's in earshot."

Aeryn rests her hand on her son's shoulder, feels the smooth young skin of his neck, and he gives her a bright grin as he shrugs off her touch. "See you in the morning, Mom."

She knows it will embarrass him, but she can't help herself. She pitches her voice low. "I love you."

He blushes, eyes darting to the side to make sure no one has heard her. "Yeah," he murmurs, "me too."

John waits until they're out of earshot to make his first foray and she's absurdly grateful, her mind on the child growing inside her and on the child she's just left alone with his peers.

He speaks right after they turn the corridor, his tone ragged. "You're still ready to risk all that for a possibility?"

She's never shied away from John, and they've lived and loved for a long time. So she tells him the truth. "Yes."

And they are off.

For a few tiers the only noise between them is the striking of his boots on the deck, his usual soft-footed strut now hard and angry. If she were closer, if they weren't moving through corridors and dodging around crew, she's certain she could also hear his teeth grinding.

She'd speak, but there's nothing for her to say. She's said her piece and acted accordingly, what's left is to see it through so that everyone is safe at the end. He'll talk when he wants to; she's assured of that.

He veers back to the mess instead and she follows him through the line, scans her temp ident chip and lugs another jug of water back to their quarters, the silence between them a truce. The door slides shut and he locks it as he always does for the night when they bunk aboard a carrier. She waits a moment, then goes to the head. Water in, water out, it becomes like breathing during the first and fourth quadmesters. Perhaps Rygel did so well with D'Argo at first because he was constantly diving for pieces of his parents, immersed in the healing waters of seas now long since boiled away.

She remembers watching the boy playing in the palace pools, careful hands cradling a tadling like his Papa Ryg had held him. Her son will have a baby sister, a bigger family than just the two of them. He will.

She takes a deep breath and heads into the main room. John's sitting on the bed, waiting, his open stare meeting up with hers as soon as the door slides out of the way, more than perfect aim, more like magnets clicking together.

"I sent a message to Moya." The anger remains, tucked inside instead of pounding through his boots. "She and Pilot will stay close."

"That's good. The carrier will be running through training exercises for the time we'll be here; she won't be led anywhere dangerous following us."

John stands and closes the distance, looking down at her and speaking in a measured tone. "If his mother dies, this is the last place I want my son to be."

There's a flicker of an image, John leading an evacuation of two from a carrier of tens of thousands, fleeing to Moya as one retreats from a field of heavy losses. "You're being ridiculous."

"And you," his voice rips raw from his throat, anger and fear breaking out in the safety of their locked quarters, bursting out finally in the small safe space left between them, "you are being far more selfish than I ever gave you credit for."

Then he hasn't been giving her credit enough, she thinks. She's had a child to stay close to him, to have a family of her own making. If that first choice wasn't selfish she doesn't know the definition of the word. And if he doesn't know her reasons, then his own selfishness, his own fears are masking his reasoning.

She fires back, "You are blowing this out of proportion--"

"No, I'm not," he growls. "I watched my mother die, Aeryn. Watched cancer eat away at her, knowing I couldn't do anything. And I wasn't a boy, I was a grown man and it still hurts. You don't just get over losing a parent."

She narrows her eyes, "I am aware of that, but I think you are inflating the risks."

"Don't you remember last time?" he shoots back, body braced and aggressive, using his larger mass as a tool.

She resists rolling her eyes, knowing he needs this fresh and harsh and raw, in the open, before he'll come to terms with a decision already made. "We were under enemy fire, and my body rejected the pregnancy John. It was that simple. We were in battle and we had no medical resources. It was bad luck and bad timing and there is no chance of those circumstances being repeated."

"Bad luck," his voice rises, "bad timing. Shit, Aeryn, it wasn't just one of our dumb ass plans going wrong."

"Yes," she hisses back, "it was. It was the two of us taking a risk that shouldn't have been a risk, and having it go pear-shaped. We assumed, because the worst thing that happened with D'Argo was him being gestated in a Hynerian and birthed in a firefight, that the next child would be just as effortless. And we were wrong. Bad luck, bad timing."

He stalks away from her, seeking distance in the small quarters.

"It's not that simple, Aeryn. Things could go even worse here. Hell, we haven't had a major disaster in almost a cycle. This is like asking for something to go horribly wrong. So what the hell is worth that risk? Because you proving to the frelling universe that you can have another child, that you can beat our bad luck sure as hell isn't worth the risk of you dying and leaving D'Argo alone." He swallows heavily, sorrowing slipping in behind the anger, "Leaving the both of us alone."

It makes sense, the anger, the assumptions. And he's not wrong. But he's not right either. He hasn't been out there for almost a cycle.

She bites back her own instinctive anger, tries for calm, tries to summon up the cycles of growing together, of acting in accord, parents, partners, lovers and friends. "Maybe you're right, and I'm acting selfishly. I won't deny that. But..." she pauses, thinks about how she wants to say this. "Right now, he's unique in the universe. And I don't want him to be...alone. The only one of his kind. This wasn't an active choice, but now we can give him that. The chance to have someone else out there who is like him."

"And so you're betting the mother he has on the sister he might not get." John rubs his forehead, takes a step to the side. "He needs *us*, Aeryn, more than some weird ideal of 2.4 kids and a picket fence and a dog named Snuggles."

"John, you're--"

"*Us*, both of us." He turns back to her, expression caught between demanding and pleading. "Maybe on this carrier he'd already be pulling duty shifts and working toward a rank promotion--he's not a carrier kid, he's our kid, and he's very much *still* a kid, no matter how much he's grown in the weeks you've been gone. He's the first priority, we decided that long ago, and he still needs you."

"I'm not volunteering for a suicide run, here, John. I'm on a fully-crewed command carrier on a training mission." It's the best place for her to do this, all things considered, and he simply won't see it. "Even if things go completely wrong I'm not going to die--I didn't die before and we were under the gun without any resources."

"It's tempting fate, Aeryn."

That makes her snap, pulls her close to get into his face. "Frell fate--what did fate ever do for us? Nothing. We do for ourselves, and if I want a daughter I'll damned well have one."

"That's just great, that's fucking fantastic." He mutters it as he drops onto the bed, as if the anger is too big and he's suddenly too tired to move it. "What are you gonna do for an encore, huh? Saw yourself in half and turn into rabbits?"

She takes the moment to swig a long draught of water, the thirst like at itch that keeps flaring. "You can spend the next six weekens pouting if you want to, it's not like it matters at this point."

"No it doesn't, because you've made the decision for all of us." He pops back to his feet. "Screw the people who care about you and need you, you're gonna do what you want!"

She slams the jug down, slopping water on the table. "You said it was my decision to make--"

"I thought you'd make the right one--serves me right to assume, huh?" He pulls his jacket from the chair and huffs the rest as he punches his arms into the sleeves. "Well that's it, I'm not the captain here but I do have *some* authority left."

"Where are you going?"

"Med bay."

"What the frell for?"

"You won this round, you do whatever the frell you want, I can't stop you." He strides back, slipping the last phrase into the air like a shock charge that doesn't detonate. "But I'll be damned if it'll happen again."

She pounces on the concession. "So you admit there could be a next time, that this pregnancy is not tantamount to suicide like you keep blathering about."

"No, Aeryn, *no* next time. I'm closing up shop, shutting down the factory, taking the boys to the vet like a responsible pet-owner--ain't no way we're doing this again no matter what happens."

Sterilized, like a soldier with a lethal mutation or a radiation injury. She imagines the officer of the day coming in to verify the odd request, which is slightly more believable than imagining John submitting to such a procedure. "You can't be serious."

"Try me." He palms the lock and she slams her hand on it again. The door gives a little whine from the conflicting commands.

This has gone too far. "Take off your jacket."

"It's a simple equation. You can't make the sane decision then it's up to me to take that choice off the table."

"Take your jacket off. *Now*, John."

"Get away from the door."

"Fine." She feints away and trips him. "But no one leaves until we settle this."

He catches one of her ankles in both hands and crooks his leg up to pop her behind the other knee, and she lands across him, her palms slapping the deck behind her.

They've spent too much time wresting for fun over the years, reflexes bent toward each other's familiar moves, and their grappling pauses with him on his back and nestled between her legs, her boots tucked under his thighs for leverage that she usually uses to more pleasant ends.

He rises up, hands propped behind himself. Her skin is flushed, pink on the bones of her cheeks, the heels of her boots digging into his hamstrings. They've had a decent run of luck recently, and he'd almost forgotten how she'd occasionally scare the piss out of him. She watches him with angry eyes, bright skin and willful enough to be a force of nature. He sweeps his hands into her hair, cradling her head and feeling the tension in her neck and spine, and he kisses her as if it were the last time, as if she'd come back from the dead again, as if they only had another few moments.

Maybe that's all he does have with her. As angry as he is, as petrified as he is underneath that, he doesn't want her to leave like that.

She allows the kiss for more than a few microts, bleeding off some of his need and his fear, her tongue cool in his mouth, and then she shoves him down, bouncing his head off the decking.

"Frell you John. You've already made your decision, is that it? Got it in your head that I'm going to die."

His head is ringing, and he hears outrage in her voice, hears her intimate, utter knowledge of him. He's never stopped clinging to her when desperation edges in. He can be angry, terrified, pissed off or shattered, dying, and he finds her, finds her mouth and her skin and her strength, draws from it. Even now, prone and furious, needy and longing and wanting to shake her as much as frell her, he draws from her ferocity, her steel spine and rigid determination.

"I'm preparing for the worst," he bites back, "covering our bases. Strategizing Aeryn. Frell, you're the one who taught me to do it."

He's quick and he knows her body, her flashes of distraction, knows that in the early stages of pregnancy her reflexes are still faster than his, but her attention is a little scattershot. He grabs her wrists and with a hard jerk hauls himself back up flush to her body. He gives in and shakes her a little, and she glares, hot and hard.

Lust flares and flutters and she cants her hips against his, stirring him. "Goddammit," he growls. "That's a sucker punch."

Her eyes slit, catlike and fierce, and this could go from fighting to fucking with a flick of a eyelash, with a slow blink and a rougher kiss. He's not ready to concede yet.

"We promised each other a life together." He says, grip still tight on her wrist but thumb stroking the skin. " No more Butch and Sundance and a hideout in Bolivia, no unnecessary risks. A life, together. Out here."

"We take greater risks everyday," she insists, and he can see that part of her believes this. "Do you honestly think embarrassing a senior member of the Kai cooperative wasn't a risk? That being on this carrier isn't a risk? Training militia pilots to blast each other to pieces until a bigger threat comes along?"

"They're acceptable risks, things we do because they're worth doing. Well, maybe not drag racing with Kai-tyil, but the rest of them. We're doing our part, doing more good than harm, and I can't believe that you think that putting yourself in unnecessary danger is a risk on that same level. It isn't anything more than selfish Aeryn, it's willfulness, stubbornness, a signature Aeryn Sun 'I'm not going to lay down and have the universe dictate the terms of my existence' move."

She shakes out of his grip, angling her body so that she knees him in the ribs and he woofs out in pain, gasping for air and slapping her thigh with the flat of his hand. "Christ, you play dirty."

She stands over him, staring down. Enigmatic as she reaches for the water jug, taking a swig of it, drinking more deeply when the sip fails to satisfy her thirst.

He isn't ready to relent but he's already lost the fight, only one more volley to offer up. He can play dirty as well. "I've lived without you Aeryn. I know what it feels like, to look at you and not see any trace of the woman I that I love, just a body. I've seen you dead because of my weaknesses. I've been left behind more than once, and I do not fucking want to repeat that process." He leans forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, looking up at her past his furrowed brow. "But this isn't just about me."

She tips the water jug and pours it onto him. He bellows, sputters, wipes the water out of his eyes, and wonders if that's going to be it. That jug looks like it'd make quite a dent in his skull.

"I need more water," she says, voice gravel rough.

He stands, shaking water from his hair like a dog, and reaches slowly toward the jug. She lets him disarm her, watches him walk to the basin to refill it, and accepts the heavy jug with a nod. He watches her make a healthy dent in the water, remembering the stunned looks the Luxans had given her when they were rescued from the Scarrans and she'd divided her time between reloading and cycling half their water supply through her kidneys. The hunger will hit her in a few hours, and after that he'll be lucky to have six full weekens of dread ahead of him.

Back on earth he wouldn't even have been invited to his wife's baby shower; here in the UTs he's become something of a specialist in firefight gynecology. He shucks his jacket, throws it on a chair, and waits for her to finish.

Time-out is a skill as hard earned as not walking away, like scratching *around* the mosquito bite instead of digging into it until it bleeds. It's taken them years to learn to how to fight, to secure a space for it between them. It's a kind of ceremonial combat, marital sumo with unspoken rules, honesty above all; cheap shots are foul play that only docks your own score. It's taken them years to work it out and it still takes focus from both of them, still too easy to slip into the previous reflexes, comfortable and dangerous. Hurtful. It's damned difficult to hurt and not let yourself hurt back. To trust, even when you disagree.

She's locked him in, wanting this settled before the pregnancy gains too much momentum, before she can't afford the distraction. She wants him solidly behind her, wants him to trust. She wants him to give her this chance. But it's such a huge risk, and he doesn't think she appreciates the damage she could do, doesn't think she's thought out what her death would mean.

John activates the console, clearing the space of lesson plans and messages. He opens a clean file, fingers negotiating the Sebacean keypad easily even if they stab harder than necessary. She sets the jug down and reads over his shoulder, the intro lines of the last will and testament of Aeryn Sun.

She exhales hard and sharp through her nose. "You won't let this go, will you?"

"Be prepared."

"I'd like to see you prepare for your daughter just as thoroughly."

His fingers pause. It feels like a cheap shot, but it's honesty. "I'll worry about the kidlet if you worry about D'."

"I worry about the both of you, but I refuse to let that paralyze me. Unlike you, I have faith in the people I love."

"Then why is the door locked?"

"Because you're being irrational."

"There you go."

She shoves him out of the chair, her viciousness barely contained, and he relinquishes the seat with a flourish.

"You're the one who said we don't need pets and fences and all that human dren; now you want me to do this 'testament' thing as if it makes any difference--"

"Makes a difference for me, and for D'."

"Knowing what to do with my possessions? How could that help?"

"Don't give a damn about your *stuff*, woman. What I need you to put down on paper are the things you won't be able to tell him if you're dead two monens from now."

"The only things either of us have held back from him are the things that would hurt him."

"So he's full up, then, is he? Has all the love he needs from you?"

There's a pause while their internal referees both call the shot. Close, but still fair. When she speaks her voice is low and thick. "I can't put love into a computer file."

"Hopes, dreams, wishes. This is your chance to put them down. When he graduates from the telacademy--what will you say? When he gets his heart broken, when he wins, when he loses, when he goes off to live his own life, when he makes you a grandma; what will you say? Put it down now, while you can."

She turns to him. She's caught up enough on her thirst to spare water for her eyes. "And you? Since you've all but buried me?"

He lets the beat pass, looking at her, looking to her. "About you? What'll I tell our son about you?"

She lifts one shoulder and he knows it's only part of what she meant. Learning to fight has been almost secondary to learning how to include another person, another thought and another duty in the space between each other. So much loss, death and near death, so much absence that the danger of being irrationally consumed, of destroying the universe for one another had loomed large. They fought against that, found a place for rationality in love, but it was a struggle. Everyday it was a struggle to not just hole up, backs to each other, backs to the wall and not think of anything else but danger, and a fragile peace that existed because of how close they'd come to taking away choice from everyone.

So what would he say to his son about his mother? What does he know of her wishes and fears and hopes for their kid? What would he say about what Aeryn was to him? The fight's gone out of him. He's still raw and jittery, but he's done leveling hurt on her. He's not gonna back down on this particular exercise, but maybe it's something they both should have done cycles ago.

He kneels done in front of her, hand on her thigh, fingers against the sweep of her jaw, the silk of her hair grazing his fingertips.

"I'd tell him that there was this astronaut who went for a ride one day and got lost, wound up in the middle of a firefight, woke up to the girl of his dreams."

She quirks her mouth, unimpressed. "He's heard that story. He remains dubious."

John's eyes shadow. "I got others. I've got a small yacht full of stories about his mom - about her courage and stubbornness and humor, about that look you get on your face when your about to lay down the law, the way your mouth curves the same when you're flying hard and fast as when you're coming."

She snorts with laughter, rubs her eyes with the back of her knuckles. "I doubt he'd want to hear that. I'm not certain I wanted to hear that, but it does explain your occasional reaction to..."

He squeezes her knee. "I'll tell him about the moments of watching you with him, watching you both focus so intently on something that the rest of reality tunes out. How he's the only thing in the universe that makes you forget the gun at your hip, how your whole face gets the same sense of wonder on it as his does when he makes a discovery, how you've never stopped growing beyond what you thought you were and what you could be." He feels the tears in the back of his own throat.

She presses her fingers to the hollow of his throat, narrows her eyes, "And you," she says, "what do you want to know from me?"

She strokes his neck, his temples with her cool fingers and lets his hand brush her chest as it makes a path down her body to mirror his other hand on her thigh.

He looks up at her, squints a little. "We haven't kept secrets in a long time Aeryn, and whatever secrets are still out there are better off lost, I think. I know you love me, love our son, know you've made me a better man. I don't think there's more I need to know."

She shakes her head at him, bends her neck gracefully, kisses him hard and hot and sweet. His hands tighten on her thighs and she slides her tongue into his mouth, possessive and sweeping. He groans against her, slides his hands up so they curve around her hips, thumbs sweeping into the vee of her legs.

"Perhaps," she whispers against his jaw, moving her mouth to nip the skin of his neck, "We can work out this testament verbally before I commit it to paper."

"Negotiate terms?" he chuckles, fingers brushing over her sex, catching her hitch of breath.

She tweaks a nipple through his shirt. "Mm-hmm."

She stands, pulling him from his knees and wincing at the creak of his joints. He shrugs. She strips off his shirt and draws a nipple into a hard suck, steering him toward the bed alcove.

"You were saying?" He walks backward as she unfastens his belt and his fly, pausing as the heels of his boots thud against the low alcove platform.

"I'll do this thing for D'Argo, for you. I'll record as many messages as you want." She caresses his hands as he returns the favor, unbuckling and unzipping her. "But I need one thing from you."

"What's that?" He sits on the step to unstrap her boots and then kicks his own off. She waits until he joins her next to the bed, each of them tossing aside the last bits of clothing, the last shreds of distance.

She pushes him down hard enough to bounce, then sits astride him, the beginnings of humor in her eyes clouded by the whisper of need in her voice. "You have to get everything ready for her."

"You know I'll give you everything you need, everything I can." He pulls her chest to chest with him, her hair falling down around their faces soft and dark. For a moment they simply breathe, skin to skin. "I don't want to lose you, I'll do whatever it takes."

"I know that." She slides her cheek along his. "What I'm asking you do to is prepare for the best, while I prepare for the worst."

His eyes leak from the corners, the words mere breath between them. "Whatever you want from me, just stay."

She nods, rubbing a stubble burn into her cheek. She rises up on her knees, positioning his hardness lengthwise between her lips and beginning a thoughtful stroke, taking them away from that raw edge with a tentative hint of humor. "We'll need supplies. She'll need a name. I want you to take care of both."

"I will." His eyes are dark as he shifts in counterpoint.

"Let's see." She licks her palm and slips it around the head of his cock, using the leverage to rock his length against her clit. "As for everything else, you can have my Prowler and tools. But my guns are strictly for the boy."

He slaps her ass and she squeezes in return, making him shudder beneath her.

"Pulse cannon's almost as big as he is," John quips, "We'd have to get him a cart to haul it around," and then moans as she sinks down on him, tilts her hips forward, her neck a smooth curve. She hums, rocks her pelvis, squeezing him. Her hands weave through his, settle his grip on her waist and he presses down until they're melded together as tightly as possible, the muscles in her thighs taut with the strain.

"I want him happy, healthy," she says. "I want you happy and healthy." She runs her hands up over her body, cupping her breasts and he slides the heel of his hand over her clit. He loves this part, not just the sex, but knowing this body, her body, knowing her pulse and reaction, the texture of her skin, the grip of her sex, the line of her thigh and the curve of her ass. He loves her, knowing her, loving her, and being pissed off at her, it's all one. He's so very grateful to have this thing here with her, this marriage in all it's various states of learning and negotiation.

He's sinking into himself, drifting in the pleasure, trying to drift away from his wariness and fear. She slides her fingers underneath his, steering his way over her clit and he chuckles. "You just can't let someone else drive, can you?"

She leans back, hands on his thighs, rhythm steady.

"If I do die," she says slowly, "I think you should tell him everything. Tell him who we were, what we've done. Maybe not now, but later. I'd like him to be proud of us."

It chokes him up, and he wants a flurry here, the fury of passion, the humor of Aeryn doling out guns and leather and steel. "He's proud," he says, and then bucks up with his hips, rolling her over to her side and sliding out of her.

He nuzzles against her lips with an appreciative moan, and she lets him taste her, lets him suckle at her clit while her fingers try and fail to get a solid grip on his hair. Too short at the temples, enough that the white hairs sparkle in the light. He's reverent and slow, savoring her, just barely enough friction to keep her interested.

He splays one hand on her belly, pressing down as he slips a finger in below his tongue. That's better, that's something she can work with. She slides the sole of one foot up his side, then props it across his back. He settles on the bed, his manner as leisurely as his attentions, one leg crooked to the side.

The angle of his hip beckons, and she pushes her other foot toward the inviting niche between fur coverlet and fuzzy groin. Her toes find him, silky skin and hardness buried in soft bedding. They both moan. He matches the rhythm of her instep, stroking her with tongue and fingers. Orgasm flares hot orange on the horizon, there for the taking, and she grasps a handful of his hair to tilt his head to the side, to aim him and to catch a better view of the slow thrust of his ass as he grinds his cock against the soft arch of her foot and he responds, quickens the pace to shove her over the edge.

She's still panting as he wipes his grin, kneeling back with that beautiful cock waiting for her to come back and play.

It's been too long since they've had time like this, time to frell for arns, to frell until they have friction burns and their muscles shake and their ears ring. It's a good way to begin.

As if she needed an excuse, seeing him like this before her. Vulnerable and fervent, his body an offering and a challenge, textures and tastes that are more erotic for being familiar; she knows how to make him respond, his body trusts her touch and leans into it. Home is where this man is, delightful and welcoming despite the occasional storms.

She rises up on her knees and throws an arm around his shoulders, kissing him with a languor that flaunts her afterglow. She wants to see him go off, wants to watch him gasp and spurt. He belongs to her, and she can fly him as well as any ship. She cradles his balls in her hand and smiles when they roll and tighten, when he moans into her mouth.

He moves his lips to her neck and she nudges him to widen his thighs, to let her press her sex against the taut muscle there. His hand sweeps her back, sweeps over her ass, comes back to tangle in her hair and she grips him tightly, feeling the heat and the hardness, the ridges of veins and the smooth silk of him against her touch.

He watches her stroke him, hips bucking forward in short erratic thrusts of excitement. She eases the pressure, slips her fingers over his balls again, slides lower to stroke the thin, fine skin behind, to press up and into him and he growls, moans in her ear.

"Bad angle for that kind of play," he whispers. She grins at him, continues to stroke and he sits up on his knees, grasping her around the waist to keep her pressed to him, his thigh between her legs, her body at enough of an angle that she has room to stroke him fully. He holds her up, holds her steady, panting slightly, hands lazily stroking her breast, her shoulder, slipping into her mouth to be suckled. She moves her hand back to grasp him as she slides down his back with the other, taking a moment to squeeze the firm pliant muscle of his ass.

She's spent whole weekens of her life watching his ass, watching his ambling cocky stride. She's yet to tire of the sight or the feel. She delves further, between his cheeks, pushing up with enough pressure to make him groan, to shove his hips forward, his cock forward in her grip and it's a circuit, a surefire, ignition and light and he yells as she presses, tugs, strokes, as she sucks his thumb into her mouth with that hand framing her jaw and throat, his other clutching her waist as he comes, hot and thin and sticky against her hip. His face is lax, so lovely as he comes down, twitching and relieved, eyes half lidded, glassy blue under the lashes. He pulls his thumb away, brushing it against her teeth, damp fingers over her cheeks and he kisses her, messy and lush. She shivers, insatiable and longing, happy to be here with him, to love him.

"Love you," he murmurs, tugging her towards him to press against his body, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, to fuse to her, sweat and semen and sex clinging to them, her skin sticky, his hot and damp and musky.

"Shall we take this to the shower then?" she asks, low, when she's sure she's got breath enough, when she's ready for sounds beyond his breath and his touch.

"Got a better idea, c'mon," he says, and slides off the bed, hands still on her waist, still guiding her. She follows willingly as he draws her to the fresher, and cocks an eyebrow as he gestures to the large deep basin newly installed in the corner.

"It's got a bathtub, " he says, as if it's the most surprising thing in the world. "A real tub, not like those weird troughs we've got on Moya. They installed 'em a few weekens ago at the request of some of the delegations who have serious water issues. But we get one, too." He waggles his eyebrows.

Aeryn rolls her eyes. Cycles ago, a Peacekeeper with only one future, she'd looked at sex only as release, as a biological function, something pleasurable and necessary and little else. Mixing this bright ridiculous joy with the physical pleasure, the layers of laughter and absurdity that come with knowing a body and a person so intimately, not just moments spent with a comrade but a lifetime spent with a friend and lover, sometimes it still surprises her, the way that sex mixes with all these other parts of their life together, how it reflects and is reflected in everything between them, how inseparable their love is from anything they do together.

He opens the tap and adjusts the temp, fingers sweeping through the stream of water. "I'll make it worth your while, baby."

She smiles.

D'Argo hits the doorpad and nothing happens. He growls, shoves the strap of his pack higher on his shoulder and slams his hand against the pad again. Nothing. Frelling carrier tech; everything's either sharp or bulky, black or red when it isn't grey, and uniformly boring even when it works properly. What good's a ship you can't talk with?

He lays his palm on the lock and barks, "Override!" voice raspy dry from too much yelling and not enough sleep. He just needs to lie down for an arn or two before meeting the guys at the pool. Water and friends are the only things he can't get on Moya, the things that make staying on a carrier worth the aggravation, make putting up with the cramped quarters and the drenhead cadets worthwhile. The door slides open and D'Argo stumbles through, propelled by weariness and his heavy pack.

The conversation stops with his entrance.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in."

D'Argo fights the yawn, face squinching as his jaws stretch open behind closed lips.

"I remember that face." His mother crosses her arms. "He used to make that face right before he needed changing."

His dad chuckles as he strips the pack from his shoulders and pushes him toward bed. Not the cadet cot against the far wall, but the big bed, covered in fur and murmuring sweet comfortable nothings to D'Argo.

"Just gonna lie down for a few minutes. Gonna go swimming."

"Understood, son." His mom pushes him down and tugs off his boots. "Just a few minutes."

"Guys...make a team, y'know? Tel'cademy needs a team." The bedding is cool against his cheek. There's a tug beneath him and half the coverlet lands over him. "Swim team."

"He looks so innocent."

"He looks like a burrito."

"B'rrito?"

"Like a gwiero."

D'Argo's too snug and comfortable to take offense. Instead he thinks of how yummy the gwieros on Hyneria were. He flickers into dreams of Papa Ryg's country estate, his parent's voices filtering through in a fading undertone.

"He does, a little; a boy-filled palace treat. So. Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"You don't have to do this, you know."

"I do. I'll give it this chance, I'll keep my end of the bargain. But I can't risk it again, Aeryn."

"Fine. Then let's do this."

His dad sighs, muttering, "Now I know how Snuggles felt."

He doesn't have a clue as to what his parents are talking about, doesn't care exactly. They sound more like them now, teasing and easy with each other, pushing and pulling and in tune like the Prowler when it's just been repaired, when it hums in perfect pitch.

He feels his mom touch his forehead to brush his hair back, feels her cool lips on his cheek and then their footsteps disappear. He thinks of water and Hyneria, swimming in the palace pools, Papa Ryg sneaking him marjoules and tiny cakes when no one was looking. The prerogatives of royalty, he'd said.

The other guys can swim, but none of them have seen Hyneria, they don't know how to hold their breath in a rhythm so that it cycles through, keeps you buoyant, follows your stroke. He's got lungs as strong as any Sebacean, and he kicks ass in the freestyle crawl and the breaststroke. When they start the team... he drifts off to thoughts of cheering crowds and competition, cutting cleanly through water and winning, beating the crap out of the cadets who learn to swim only because they have to and then still think they're so much frelling better than everyone else.

She puts in the orders to the tech herself, not quite trusting John or the medical staff to submit the proper paperwork for the procedure without specifics.

Sterilization is unusual, a request for one unheard of on a command carrier, and while he adamantly wants this absurdity, she knows he's nervous. He fiddles with his belt, joggles her arm, talks too loudly as they wait for the approval. Bravado propels him as much as determination and he's still unintelligible to most Peacekeepers when the bravado's at its worst. The med techs don't care much what they do, a task is a task, but the command structure still reviews every request in the queue and there remain issues of lingering resentment and distrust. She wants him sterilized, not castrated.

She doesn't mention that particular possibility to John, knowing it'd be a cheap shot. Doesn't mean she's not tempted though.

They sit in the waiting area until the med tech comes for them. He leaves them alone in the room, and when John takes off his pants, sits on the table in his t-shirt and shorts, his black socks incongruous with his pale legs, she feels a flutter of compassion and a wave of sorrow. She doesn't intend to have offspring with other men should she outlive John, and so this pregnancy will be her last chance for another child. If the fetus dies, that will be it. She has faced far worse things, but it bites a little, stings with the removal of possibility.

John offers up his hand and she moves towards him, sliding his thigh between her legs and stroking the back of his neck. She presses her lips against the softness of his hair and he wraps his arm around her waist, holding her to him. "This is gonna hurt like a mother, isn't it?"

She pulls back, raises an eyebrow. "That would be my guess," she says, fighting back a dark grin. She's not looking forward to labor with anticipation, either. Hurt like a mother, indeed.

"It's the right decision," he says, voice heavy and determined. She doesn't argue with him. It's his choice as much as release the fetus was hers. Control of their bodies, their lives. It's something they fight for everyday. She cannot condemn his choice even though she doesn't like it, can't deny him the right.

The surgeon enters and she steps away from John, staying close enough so that he can reach for her if he wants to.

"Take them off," the physician says, voice colorless.

John removes the shorts, looking terribly vulnerable bared to the room. The surgeon injects something into the join of his thigh and he twitches. Lifting up his testicles, the surgeon slides the thin laser into position and flicks it on.

"Goddamn sonofabitch," John growls, but doesn't look at her. He only grunts the second time.

And it's done. He's no longer able to produce children.

"You'll be numb for the next arn," the surgeon warns, "and then there will be more pain. I wouldn't...put unnecessary strain on it if I were you." With a perfunctory keying of a datapad, he leaves.

John's face is ashy, his trembling fingers as likely from the shock as the anesthetic. "Think I need a little help here, baby."

Aeryn helps her husband dress, carefully sliding the zipper up, buckling his belt. She runs her hands over the small of his back, soothing him as she soothes her son when he's overly tired or hurt.

John pulls her towards him, clinging to her. "Didn't think it was going to feel like that," he says, mouth moving against her cheek.

"No," she says, "Neither did I."

 

John shakes the boy's shoulder. "Hey, sleepyhead."

D'Argo mumbles and humphs into the covers, curling away from consciousness. John pulls the fur off and starts tugging at the sheet wound around his son.

"Come on, D', day shift's half over and I'm sick of taking your messages."

There's an inquisitive grunt.

"Your crew have been comming you for arns now. Last I heard it sounded like they were heading toward the pool."

That flips the switch from curl to stretch, limbs angling out in sweeping arcs that propel him off the edge of the bed. Planned or not, he lands on his feet and heads toward the fresher without opening his eyes.

John ambles to the console and lets the kids know they'll be there in half an arn. He adjusts the small cold pack tucked in his shorts, looking forward to hanging out in the cool buoyant water of the pool.

Since they're going to be on the carrier for the duration, he might as well take the opportunity to work with these kids face to face as much as possible. Too much of this teaching gig happens over vid. The nature of the telacademy is ad hoc, catch as catch can and run from a distance, and it's the best option available for families on the move--even when mediated by long-range communications, it's the most diverse education they could offer D'Argo--but John likes being able to be in the same room with his students for a change, being able to offer them something more than assignments and tests on a console. He enjoys showing them how to do something physical that they didn't think they could do, loves the looks on their faces when they get it.

Swimming is just a way to teach them how to get along with each other in real time, work together toward a goal.

Sportsmanship, friendly competition, negotiation on a micro level; he's a co-ed, co-species coach working the Romeos and Juliets while Aeryn handles the Whatsits and the Capulets. Johnny Radiation teaching good citizenship through Little League. He knows that the coda to his reputation, for anyone who still cares, is that he's brain damaged and pathetic, a sad hollow shell of an outlaw living out his years on his wife's good graces. It's reduced the number of folks looking to make a name by killing him. Conflict mediation among teenagers is more his speed anyway; they tend to be more coherent than governments.

He's got twenty-odd kids, boys and girls and some in-between modes, from a handful of species. Enough for a decent intramural program even if none of the carrier cadets sign on.

Who knows when the team will be able to reassemble again, but that's a concern for later, the least among many. For now they can practice and maybe have a meet or two before they split off to their respective ships and lives and solitary consoles where, if they're lucky, they can see a small holo image of their classmates if the local telecom net can handle it.

D'Argo pops out of the fresher, hair as unruly as before. John intercepts him at the door, using all of his will not to hobble. "Shower."

"I'm going to the pool, I'm just gonna get wet again--"

"Technically true, but I'm not taking you anywhere when you stink."

"I showered yesterday, I don't stink."

"Want me to comm mom, have her be the judge?"

He glares at the floor and trudges back to the fresher.

"Hurry it up, I called practice in a half an arn."

"Yeah yeah."

John parks himself on a chair and tries not to dwell on his crotch. Aside from the initial piercing pain, it's not as bad as he'd feared. When he rummaged in the first aid kit for the cold pack he'd found a packet of an analgesic he recognized, so he's been sailing along on that for a few arns now. He might even eat later on today.

Now they just need to get Aeryn through this pregnancy safe and they can both concentrate on finishing what they started with the boy, do all they can to send a good man out into the universe.

A good woman too, maybe, if they get the chance. A daughter. He promised Aeryn he'd prepare for the best outcome.

He's in the middle of the grocery list when D'Argo emerges from the fresher. Over a thousand microts in the shower and the kid doesn't look a hell of a lot cleaner, but odds are he smells better than he did when he went in. It's a marvel and universal fact that teenage boys have a fear of soap that rivals the fear and intrigue of girls, yet they'll stand under the spray until an entire cargo ship of hot water passes down the drain.

"Where's Mom?" D' shoves his towel and flipflops into his rucksack, wriggles back into his t-shirt.

"Board meeting."

His son rolls his eyes. “No, really.”

"She's securing the arrangements for our extended visit, setting up some meetings while we're here. You know how everything's gotta be cleared through command, even when they have no objections. PKs are hell bent on bureaucracy. Makes the US government look positively impromptu in comparison. Course, the White House doesn’t send people to jail for frelling up a shipping invoice."

His son ignores him, used to the rambling by now. "So what're you doing?"

John hauls himself up, shoves the list into his own bag. "Grocery shopping. You and I are gonna go grab some gear at the end of the month."

"Field trip?" His son's smile is joyous and bright, a version of one of Aeryn's good day smiles.

John grins back and tries not to limp as he follows D' out the door. "Field trip."

 

They're greeted with jangling noise, high-fives for the boy, yells and catcalls, hollers of "Hey Commander" and "Yo, Mr. C, what's up." None of these kids speak English except for his son, and the translations are probably hysterical. They're parroting back D'Argo's suggestions and seem pleased with them. A few of the older Sebacean girls, fourteen or fifteen, bodies developing and minds light years ahead of their males peers give him knowing smiles, and he fights back a grin.

It's the innocence more than anything. The female cadets don't look at him like that, don't flirt. To them, he's still a killer, a traitor, someone to fear and loathe. Aeryn was one of those cadets, he knows; she followed orders, hated who she was supposed to hate, lived and breathed flight and fight, probably recreating already at that age.

These girls, well, he really doesn't want to know anything about their sex lives, but he can see in them the curiosity that he recognizes as part of growing up in a free society, growing up with the room to explore the tangles of that curiosity, to tease and play with both their bodies and their minds, to be smart and sassy and explore and flirt with their old man of a swim coach who they see as an easy mark, unthreatening and harmless.

If this daughter thing works out, when she's fifteen he's going to frelling lock her in a cell on Moya until puberty passes and he can select a nice boy for her with whom she will never, ever have sex. And with his genes and Aeryn's combined, she'll probably pick the lock and shoot her way to the nearest port of call long before that.

The group is rambling and noisy and rowdy, a little shoving here and there, a little honest trash talk and it's time to get this party started.

"Twenty laps, warm up with all four strokes. We're gonna do some sprints and some drills and then maybe have a little contest."

The giggling turns into splashes and slaps of water as the kids peel off the edges, slipping into the pool like slick glittery fish. He looks at them in wonder before he strips off his t-shirt and eases his own body into the cool water of an empty slow-side lane.

He takes a couple of easy laps in the slow lane, trying to not get slapped too much by the wake of young bodies with way too much energy knifing through the water. He's not up for much exercise, but the flutter kick doesn't hurt too badly and he needs to stretch out the muscles that his wife wore out the night before. The pain is worth the trade off of freer muscles, and he'll tuck the ice back later.

He's got a list of stuff worked out of the things they'll need for a new infant, and he wishes that it felt giddy and joyous, like D's birth had. But he remembers the hubris too well, the absolute certainty that one birth was very much the same as another and the absolute sucker punch shock of getting through yet another random firefight with only a few grazes and then Aeryn's body saying fuck you both very much.

He remembers the blood loss and her ash white face, eyes glazed, the light in them dimming out because they didn't have access to anything more than cotton padding until they could repair the conduit lines for starburst.

It was a toss up whether or not to use the kill-shot and wake her up once they'd starburst to the nearest system, once they had access to a real doctor, and maybe she wouldn't have lost so much blood if they hadn't waited so long, hadn't held out hope that the gush of blood wasn't the end of that particular child.

He nearly lost everything that day. He still feels damned lucky they got through it only a little worse for wear. She roused like a trooper when the doc jabbed in the revival shot, recovering with her usual carrier-born swiftness, and they decided never to risk her health or her life again.

He does an easy flip turn, sucks in his breath as his body suggests that swimming wasn't such a fabulous idea. He turns onto his back in a lazy backstroke down the length of the pool, hissing a little as the pain recedes, as he puts the memory and the fear away.

"Hey Kai, why don't you stretch a little more, your dorsal arms look a bit stiff. Once everyone's warmed up we'll do A and B relays."

Kai sighs heavily, sloshing toward the poolside to work on his arms.

He doesn't really mind that his rep is gone, doesn't mind not being John Crichton, scourge of the universe, he likes living in his wife's shadow. He's so damned proud of Aeryn, surprised and pleased and proud that her fine mind has allowed them some diplomatic immunity. He's pretty sure that a few strings got pulled, a few hints whispered about, and that in the beginning it was fear as much as anything that got the Crichton/Sun duo in the cabinet rooms and embassies. One too many outbursts on his part had cemented the idea that he was still a cowboy but useless now, an eccentric appendage to the real brains.

He'd been a hotshot for most of his life, young and bright, he'd had a small flurry of media attention, had been the star of the show before becoming Mr. Most Wanted, and he's pretty damned content these days to just take the ride, care for his family, and practice peace on a smaller scale. It stings once in a while, but it's a burn he can live with.

Live being the operative word. Still, they have to be careful. Not everyone's happy to have the past behind them, and there are still bounties for his head and for Aeryn's in certain jurisdictions. He doesn't even kid her about her price being higher now. She doesn't think it's funny.

He teaches physics, sure, theoretical science and inter-dimensional mathematics, but he doesn't touch on wormholes as anything other than theory. And he doesn't talk to anyone about the way they still dance in his head sometimes like a junior prom tease, awkward with potential; the way he knows, if he tries, that he could work it out again. Maybe not sniff them out like sugar glaze and sea salt, maybe not ride that scent like a rollercoaster, but figure them out and make 'em work. He isn't limited, and the knowledge had always been there. Before Furlow, he'd been on the right track. But it isn't something he talks about to anyone, not even Aeryn, not now. If it ever becomes an issue...well, they'll deal. They're good at dealing.

He completes another lap, a little breathless and questioning his choice to exercise, then hauls himself out of the pool, fires up the lap timer and writes the sets on the board, gives the kids a couple thousand microts to finish the drills.

D' finishes first in his lane, shaking water off his hair like a young seal. He's growing so fast these days, gangly and a little awkward, but a bright beautiful regular kid. He looks over at John and sends a splash of water towards him, a bit of a challenge, a good-natured dare.

"All right, " John says, when they're red-faced or blue-faced or white-faced with exertion. "We're gonna learn to play a game."

The kids split up into a group at each side of the square pool, colored patches on their suits designating each five-being intramural team. John reaches into his gear bag for a handful of marker tags and he can see the kids tense, feel them rev their engines waiting for the light to turn green.

He leans against the wall panel casually, keying in a series of currents and jets that will turn the pool into an ever-changing body of active water. PKs learn how to swim because they may need to deal with rivers, floods, and tides, so while their training pool didn't come with pre-marked lanes, it does have a "rapids" setting. John keys in a twenty-minute sequence and starts the jets, tossing a handful of markers into the water as it begins to churn.

Speed is one thing. "On your mark."

Agility is another. "Get set."

Teamwork yet another. "Go!"

The kids kick off into a seething mass of water and flailing limbs, chasing after the tags which sink or float or drift in the currents depending on their variable mass. Soon tags fly through the air, each one a point only if it lands safely on that team's side. Kai-sen isn't so fast in the water, but he specializes in catching tags lobbed by other teams, intercepting them and whipping them to his own side.

John readies another handful of marker tags, vigilant for any sputtering or foul play. It's been weeks since he's had to drag anyone out for air, but only a few days since the last elbowing incident. Water is far easier to navigate than other people, with their flailing limbs and emotional passions, but he figures this ad-hoc swim team is more than just an exercise in keeping everyone busy.

The universe isn't about straight lines and speed, after all. It's teamwork and bruises and keeping your eyes on the goal without kicking someone in the face.

"Love is like teamwork, son."

D'Argo eyes squint as his eyebrows rise, bracing for the pain of embarrassment, the awkward travail of another Serious Talk.

"When you love someone, you take care of them and let them take care of you; friendship is the most important part of it. If you aren't friends...lemme start over."

D'Argo rests his forearms along his thighs, limbs angling in to take up less space, as if he could plane through the conversation faster that way, as if it were a patch of murky water to get through.

"It's three things, son; sex, friendship and love. When you've got all three firing there's nothing that can beat it. Two out of three ain't bad," his dad pauses to smile, "but if you have to pick one, make it friendship. That's the most important part."

"Not love?"

"Love on its own will make you crazy, no question about it, and sex can complicate it beyond all reason. Sex on its own can make you relaxed, but lonely. But friendship, all on its own, can keep you going through the worst of your life."

He's not planning on falling in love with anybody until he's well into his thirties, but since his dad's being so frank he might as well get his reaction on the other options. "Sex and friendship?"

"Is a workable thing, when you start off as friends. You have to know how to be someone's friend before you can tackle love or sex without anyone getting hurt. Even then, you can still get hurt, you just have a better way of talking to each other about it."

"Nebari contagion, pregnancy, Ilanic tanka-pox."

"Easier to avoid than to deal with--but you also need to take care of your heart, and be responsible with the hearts of other people. Feelings are easy to hurt, and sometimes love just sucks, there's no other way around it. But if you start from friendship and treat each other honestly and fairly, you've got a way to work it out."

"Be friends first." D'Argo nods, imagining himself stroking through the last metra of murky water toward clean and clear. "That makes sense."

"Good talk, son?"

"Yeah, dad."

"Go clean up. If we're late for dinner your mom will eat our plates, too."

D'Argo focuses on his food during dinner, knowing that it'll be mom's turn next. They used to talk to him both at once when these things came up, but dad would get too flustered and they'd end up discussing all kinds of other things instead of boy/girl stuff. D's the one who started asking them questions one on one, and they followed suit as the years went by. While it means he often has to suffer through two conversations instead of one, at least they're a lot more clear, and over much quicker.

A few days later mom takes him to the shuttle pod for a maintenance check, making him wriggle into the spots that her growing belly now keeps her out of.

"Your father said you two had a good conversation the other day."

D'Argo scratches his shoulder blade against the deck, squirming in the tight space under the navigation panel. There's an overflow circuit that tends to stick open, so he's cleaning the old layer of grease off to hit it with a lighter valve lube. "Yeah."

"Sex and love and friendship, right?"

"Yeah, and friendship is the most important, the one to start off with."

"Seems easy, doesn't it?" His mom hums. "Did he happen to tell you that he and I started off with the sex first?"

Mom talks are exponentially more awkward and painful than dad talks--but she usually comes across with better info. He shifts his boots, glad that most of him is tucked under the panel where he can't see her. "Yeah?"

She laughs, "Oh, yes." He can hear her take his jacket and settle on the deck. "Sex was the easiest thing for us; at first it's what kept us coming back to each other as we figured out the friendship thing."

He turns the rag, methodically wiping grease from the trip circuit. "When did you know you loved dad?"

There's a thoughtful silence and D'Argo forgets to breath until she finally speaks. "I'm not sure, really. I didn't want to love *anyone*, and so for a long time I convinced myself that I didn't. Then I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter. Then it hurt too much to think about at all."

"So it was just sex and friendship."

"Sometimes just one or the other. On good days, both."

"On bad days?"

"On bad days there was only the love, and that's not enough to do anything except hurt like hell."

He tries to imagine it, and even with the tension between them about the new baby, he can't picture them as anything other than what they are to each other. "If you were friends before, how could you not be later?"

"Your dad and I...we were kind of like the situation on this xeno-carrier. Uneasy allies. Friends who misunderstand each other, and hurt each other on accident. People who had to learn how to talk to each other and be with each other, who had to work it out from the bottom up."

"But you kept trying."

"We did. Over and over until we figured it out."

He drops the rag near his shoulder and plucks the tube of valve oil, squinting as he applies a thin drip around the trip circuit. "Because of the sex or the love?"

"Because we had the chance to put it all together." She lays a warm hand on his shin, just above the tongue of his boot. "If we weren't afraid to take it."

That's what sticks with him later, that the whole boy/girl mess was enough to make his own mom afraid--maybe the only thing that ever did--but she kept working at it until came out right.

"They look like tadlings at feed time."

Aeryn's wearing a maternity uniform, low-slung pants and a tailored tunic-style shirt in dark material, her growing pudge of a belly tenting the generously cut front. Beneath it all he knows she's got a black pair of the highest-waist undershorts he's ever seen, complete with holster pockets angled low under the sides of the belly. He's told her they're the sexiest granny-panties he's ever seen.

"Wait until I throw in the chum." He tosses the markers in, and joins her on the side bench so they can talk over the shouts and splashing.

She nudges his bare ankle with the toe of her boot and he gives her a smile.

"They're fighting me over Seiris," she says. "That it's too close to the Breakaway Colonies, has tentative ties to a group that's aligned with the Scarrans."

He wants to laugh, this far into a marriage and raising a family and she's still not one to mince words, to start up the small talk.

"I've had a good morning too, baby. Confiscated three Sprek games, taught a little subatomic theory, assigned some celestial navigation without dedicated reference points."

She pauses, derailed for the moment. He knows she's been working on a big project, one of the colonies that they'd visited a few cycles ago, one of the colonies that his name had opened up. John Crichton, mascot for the masses, for the unwashed and the suicidal. The Crichton Sun Roadshow had come to town and all of a sudden a bunch of industrial pig farmers decided they wanted to be free. Damn the Peacekeepers and full speed ahead.

Problem was that Aeryn was George Washington to his Patrick Henry. Or maybe Thomas Jefferson with a pulse cannon. She got as caught up in the revolutionary zeal as the farmers, looking at them with more strategy than fervor thank god, but nonetheless she wanted 'em trained and wanted 'em free.

Ten cycles, he thinks and rests his hand on her knee. Ten cycles ago, they'd stopped off on a backwater planet, stayed with a contact of Nerri's who had held the world's least-secret secret meeting and John had mentioned the redcoats, had mentioned that if the PKs were smart, they'd let the locals handle their own security gigs in exchange for ready-made cannon fodder for a rainy day. Aeryn's eyes had lit with that shrewd understanding, that rapid fire strategizing she was capable of, and the momentary conversation had over the years turned into a life's work for them, for her really. He didn't much care if a bunch of pig farmers learned to fly combat and to get to fire the big guns.

The splashing in the background escalates and he puts his fingers in his mouth, whistling sharp and shrill. "No elbowing, and Kai-Sen, that means no elbowing with your knees!"

Aeryn chuckles, throaty and rich and heat beats in his belly.

She looks at him, sloe-eyed and sultry, licking her bottom lip.

He grins, runs his thumb over her chin.

"Baby, I'd be a lot more flattered if I didn't think you'd throw me over in a microt for a cheesesteak."

She chuffs out a laugh, but her eyes are speculative now, contemplating the likelihood of a multitasking quickie and John shakes his head.

"Seiris?" he reminds her.

"Starving," she counters.

 

Aeryn compensates for her changing shape with shifts of her weight, the punches coming in from lower outer angles and D'Argo has to bend and bob in new ways in order to meet them, to block and to feint around them. She doesn't pull her punches when she spars with him, wanting to train him well, but she is careful, focusing her efforts on teaching and not harming.

"When I learned to swim," he urges, rolling up on his toes, nearly losing his balance in the complex flurry of the exercise. It's a trick he's learned from John, talking and training, needing something to deflect her attention and focus his own. It doesn't work--has rarely worked for either of them--but she lets it go, knowing that it doesn't betray a lack of focus just a different sort of perspective.

She sweeps out her foot and he trips a little, gives her a wry grin and John snorts, elbows resting on his knees, back up against a padded column as he watches them.

"When you learned to swim?" Aeryn pauses and pretends to think hard, scratching the side of her belly with her eyes to the sky. "Are you *sure* you know how to swim?"

Her son gives an impatient hop, sliding around on the padded flooring. "C'mon."

"All right, all right," she gestures to the sparring pad at the edge of the mat. He fetches it and hands it over, expectant. "We'd had you for about two and a half cycles when we returned to Hyneria--"

"He's not a car, Aeryn," John laughs.

She shoots him a look. "You want to come up here and trade places with him?"

He shakes his head with a bright, lusty smile. "Don't think it's good for the boy's psyche to know his mom can whup my ass."

"Dad, everyone knows that."

"Thanks a lot, son. That's the kind of heart-warming validation I'm looking for from my own flesh and blood, the fruit of my loins, the--"

D'Argo gags, hands around his throat in a gesture she knows he learned from his father.

"Do you want me to finish this story or not?" she asks them both. It's a moot point. She likes this tale, likes the outcome and the way it's set their course.

"We came back to Hyneria because Rygel wanted a show of strength, wanted to shake up his detractors and cement the peace in his own kingdom before he signed any trade treaties with the Peacekeepers or their allies."

"You guys were on the negotiating team." D'Argo has paid attention in some of the history modules, and knows enough to read some of the things between the lines.

"At Rygel's request." Insistence was more like it, verging on blackmail, but there wasn't much she wouldn't have done for the Dominar after he'd carried and cared for their child; after he'd finely done something noble, no matter how unwilling. This favor had been the last thing they'd agreed to, their last public appearance as a silent implied threat.

It had been exhausting and frustrating and terrifying, all of that hate and fear leveled at John, his delicate place in the universal scope of power still a haunted, haunting thing. She'd been afraid to close her eyes until every last ambassador had affixed their stamp and fled the kingdom; too worried that something or someone would get past her guard, slip inside their rooms and harm her husband or her son.

"Things hadn't been going very well," she says, and John barks out a harsh laugh.

"'Course that finally caused your mother to step in, tired of the bellyaching and the threats and the name calling, all of these big time politicians acting like a bunch of heavily armed kindergartners."

"I hadn't slept in nearly two weekens. My judgment was not unimpaired."

John presses his lips together.

"So you took your gun," D'Argo prompts.

"They should have disarmed me," she says, shaking her head at the laxity. They'd both been armed, D'Argo safely hidden deep in the palace with a bevy of guards, nowhere near the action. The Illanic representative had stood up, banging her fists on the table and looking at John with such a fierce hatred and fear that something had snapped.

"Your mom'd had enough of the sniping and the focus on finding blame, she wanted the conference over, she wanted the agenda realized and she wanted everyone to frelling play nice and act like they really were as grateful for the peace as they kept saying they were between insults. So she'd said so. At pulse-point."

"It was stupid and ill-thought out."

"And effective," John says quietly, meeting her gaze.

"And effective," she agrees, matching his tone.

"They knew she'd shoot, " he said to his son. "She's not a  
woman who makes empty promises."

"No." She turns to her son and catches his eyes, wanting him to understand the seriousness underneath the levity. "No empty threats. A threat with a weapon behind it is a statement, but never bring arms to bear if you're not prepared to use them."

John swallows hard, eyes sweeping down the rounded curve of her belly and then over to his son. "They finally figured out that I was the sane one, that she was the one to watch out for."

She curves her mouth, sardonic, knowing better. She was simply an understandable threat, unlike John. She hurries to finish the rest of the story. "Once a tentative agreement was reached, Rygel had his courtiers escort us to the Palace pools, to relax."

"To work the room alone and close the deals without delegates reneging afterward because of undue pressure." D'Argo adds with a grin, "Papa Ryg showed me some of the treaties last time we were there."

"He's too smart."

"Who's fault is that?"

"So we went to the pools," D'Argo prompts again, pushing himself back into the conversation.

Aeryn leans to pick a towel from the mat, squishing her belly enough as she bends that the girl kicks back, a low and dirty blow to the bladder. "I wasn't certain about taking you into the water, you were so small, but as soon as you saw it you raced over the edge, had to be pulled back from skittering in."

"Dad took me in, right?"

She nods, willing herself not to think about urination.

"You were squirming like a tadpole," John says, "slippery and slick and I nearly dropped you, and your mom was shouting at me to hang on to you, and I'm shouting back that she worries too much and then you slid right out of my grip like a greased pig."

Fear had wrapped her throat the instant he'd gone under, even with John right there, his strong hands reaching instantly after her son.

She was in the water before she realized she'd acted, pants wet and heavy, shirt soaked as all she could think about was the feeling of lungs full and heavy and useless, the terror of the water pulling her down, thoughts and fears that hadn't surfaced in cycles, and then John ducked under the surface and D'Argo's head popped up; hair plastered down around his small face, plump cheeks in a smile and his bright high ring of laughter echoed by John's chuckle of relief.

"You scared the bejesus out of us," John says, "but you started kicking your feet and I held your belly up and you swam. Well, you sort of flopped around in the water, but you stayed upright and looked like you were having a great time. You even got your mom to come join us, clothes and all."

"It made more sense than sitting on the edge," she says, scrubbing at her face with the towel, "waiting to see what kind of disaster you two would encounter next."

 

He kisses her neck, fingers pushing back the heavy fall of her hair. He's not wild about leaving her, but there isn't anything he could do anyway, and he knows this is important for her. They've been coasting the past few weekens, Aeryn working like a fiend, he and D'Argo doing the summer school and swim team thing. It's been a decent mellow interlude, as easy as life on a carrier in the midst of a not quite hostile former enemy can be.

He's had time, luxurious time with Aeryn, sated with sex and affection and banter whenever possible, satisfying his need to be with her, to monitor her health, help her bleed off some of the energy and hormone rushes. They've had a good run, and now it's time to fulfill his end of the bargain.

"Sweet dreams," he murmurs, feeling sappy.

She shifts minutely, mumbling, "Fly safe."

 

The room assigned to them on the xeno-carrier is generous in size, but with only a small console work station, enough for John to pull messages out of the mail-cache and voice conference with his telacademy students.

They're the quarters of a visiting guest with no rank function on the carrier, and while this is technically true, Aeryn's work requires a more resourceful set-up. Combined with the fact that for each tier farther away you summon a document tech from their department, it tends to add two arns to their response time, Aeryn finds that she gets far more accomplished if she goes to the source of bureaucracy and signs in to a carrel for the day. She has access codes to the long-range comms, the Council Ministry nodes and the authority to assign work to document techs, all within easy reach in a hard-seated cubicle the size of a cockpit.

She misses flight.

She also misses her husband and her son, but things have been such a mess setting up this next militia program on Seiris that she's busy enough to blank that out for whole shifts at a time. Besides, they'll be back in a few days.

To be fair, it's not like the monen or two that it takes to set up a new program on the ground; it's not the kind of mission-length absence she's enforced on them in the past, and will in the future if this next one ever gets through the approval process.

 

And not all of her family has left. The girl seems to be sleeping, her flutter kicks stilled for now. Halfway through the pregnancy and she's already more active than D'Argo was even at the end. Maybe she can hear the bureaucracy, so she makes her own fun.

Aeryn keys her access code into the terminal and sees that the Colony Minister is finally in her office. She puts the call in so fast that it's almost reflexive. Her meeting is third in the queue, and already meetings are stacking up after that; the time pressure should work in her favor, gain her the concessions she needs, get the Minister to lean on the local PK garrison on Seiris to allow the militia program after all.

Aeryn sits back with a predatory sigh, hand absently stroking the swell of her belly and the sleeping girl within. This *will* be settled today.

 

"Mom said you get to pick out the baby's name."

"That's the deal, yeah."

"You should name her Nhsk-hgoc."

John doesn't even puzzle out the tangle of consonants and hiccups that just came out of his son. "Your mother put you up to that?"

"She said it's an old family name."

"No D', it's an old *punchline*. That's different."

 

"Sun. I've been expecting you to contact me." The Colony Minister had been a blonde back when she was a mere captain, and a washed out grey when she was an admiral. Now her hair is cropped short and silver, as if each advancement in rank has purified the color as well as honed her skills. "And yet your report has not been transmitted."

Aeryn's feet are planted on the deck, her spine straight and every fact at her fingertips--and she has no idea what the Minister is talking about.

"Keratos?" The Minister prompts, then eases back in her padded chair. "Or did you set this appointment to agitate for a program on Seiris? If so, then why am I looking at a stack of incident reports for Keratos?"

She left Keratos less than a monen ago--how could the situation have deteriorated so quickly? And why hadn't she heard about it before it reached the Minister of Colonies? Aeryn opens her mouth to take control of the situation but the Minister cuts her off.

"I'll have my staff send copies of the pertinent information to you. Again."

Reports blossom in the document queue to the left of the minister's image, tagged as re-sent from three weekens ago despite Aeryn's never having seen them before. Property destruction, mostly, and civilian damage (Aeryn translates this phrase out of PK-lingo and reads them as reports of civilian deaths) but in the last two days a second wave of incidents has broken out, this time resulting in two casualties of garrison personnel, which makes her job even more difficult.

"So unless you have information that I do not regarding the situation on the ground; or would like to assist in implementing a plan of action to quell this Keratos insurrection by more efficient means than the standard colony procedures, I believe our meeting regarding Seiris can be indefinitely postponed."

"I'll have a report for you by--"

"I'll be issuing orders regarding Keratos at the end of ministry arns today, Sun. If you want to have any input on my decisions, you should be compiling that report now."

The connection is severed and the node system inquires whether she would like to schedule another meeting.

"Frell." The girl shifts and Aeryn's stomach growls. She resists the urge to call her own staff right away, taking a moment to calculate the time of day on Keratos. She needs to read the reports first, be ready to listen to what they have to say about the situation planet-side. She also needs to eat. She uploads the documents to a reader and heads to the galley, her fury banked and growing hotter.

 

Helian City is the closest commerce station that doesn't actively ban Peacekeepers and John's not in the mood to fight the mobs at Parakalor anyway. The trade off is that Helian is a little... seedy, despite the plethora of goods.

D' walks vaguely in front of him at a little more than arms length, and even that distance makes John's skin itch. Too much here, too many things, too many species and goods and distractions. It's an alien arcade of wonders - noisy, neon and only nominally safe. His kid is better at the wariness than he is, but it's been drilled in since D' could walk. Look, listen and learn. It's all about the wonder until someone gets hurt. John himself still tends to get distracted and has come home a little dazed, cheek grazed from a fight, from a run in with good, bad and ugly and had to face the wrath of his girl as she winds her hands through their son's hair, stills her anger, saves it up then learns to diffuse it. They've all spent the last thirteen cycles learning.

The Xylian prostitutes at the milba stand give D' a quick leer, smile wide for John and he grins back at them, repressing his shudder at their sharp teeth, the wide jaws that can unhinge like a python's, the scaly shimmer of their skin. The Xylians took them in, cycles ago, hid them from a band of arms dealers that had just gotten the bottom cut out of their market by the first effort of Crichton Sun Revolutions R' Us Incorporated. But the Xylians still scare the crap out him.

He's made reservations at a small hotel on the edge of the city, near enough to town to be shopper friendly, far enough away not to get more than a glimpse of the nightlife. But they have Simpa racing every evening before the bars really get hopping and D's never been old enough to go before.

D' looks longingly at an open air stall displaying a range of Sprek offshoots. John nudges him, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder and moving him along. If he has to endure yet another variation of the Sprek and their ilk, he's gonna lose what little mind he has left. D' flashes him a grin as he's circumnavigated around the stall. "We should get t-shirts," he says. "For the team."

John chuckles. It's a good idea, and he's sure they make t-shirts with multiple armholes for the tripods and the Kai. "We'll hit the strip mall by the dock on our way out," he says.

They've got a list - clothes, medical supplies, diapers - but John figures he can put off the big shopping until the next day. Tonight he wants to grab some dinner, take in the Simpa racing, and not think about Aeryn alone on the station, engrossed in what she was working on, so engrossed that she might be ignoring important signs that things weren't... He derails that train, and keeps his fingers hooked in the collar of D's leather jacket.

There's a bookstore he wants to check out before they swing by the local comms cafe. Supposedly a new ration of the unified field theory findings that the Pathfinders are publishing in dribs and drabs are out, and he wants to pick up the latest articles. He also wants to send a message home that they're safe and plan to make themselves thoroughly ill on hot dogs, nachos and sugar at the Simpa races. Aeryn only goes to humor him. She's not interested in watching fast things that can't break atmosphere.

John spies the bookstore up ahead, and pushes his son through the crush of Sheyangs and ragtag Sebaceans to get to the entrance. The doors slide apart and they step into the filtered air of the quiet shop, both stopping short at the holo display in front of them.

 

"Goddamn sonofabitch, I should have drowned him when I had the chance."

The holo flashes images, spinning them out on the display – a space battle, a half-dressed Xylian gyrating on stage, a blonde woman with a white dress and familiar features, a bloody cage match between a Luxan and an Ilanic, a man in a funny hat with a thin spike through his head, the sea of Cepertz with the multicolored sea snakes and metra long fish, a bright-eyed grey girl.

D'Argo's not sure whether to look away, to look at his dad, or to just keep gaping. His dad goes on muttering and D' decides to take a closer look as the images cycle through again. Where's he seen that blonde lady before?

His dad snaps his hand through the holo, shutting it off and grabs the projector.

D'Argo swallows, closes his mouth and looks up. His dad is more than a little pissed.

He strides up to the back panel where the clerks are sequestered and bangs on the glass partition with the butt of the projector. D'argo follows him, waiting to see what will happen next.

The window slips up and a four-eyed Helian blinks both sets of eyes in syncopation. "Can I help you?"

D'Argo watches as John tamps down his anger, tries on a smile. "Your display up front..."

"Peacekeeper," The Helian flutters his lashes as if shooing away a cloud of fillimir-bugs, taking in the projector clutched in his dad's hand, "you'd best put that back where you found it."

His dad growls low in his throat and the Helian raises a thin, bony hand, probably to shut the partition or trip a signal to security.

"Sir, if you have a question, please ask it. If not, I'd advise you to put that projector back and leave."

"Fine." He puts the projector down in front of the Helian with an overly careful motion. D'Argo hears it click against the counter and the Helian winces, glares. "This display have anything to do with something you guys are selling?"

"It's a retrospective. The best of Yoti's work."

"Fuck."

The Helian's hand rises again. "There is no need for that sort of language, sir. This is not a Simpa pit."

His dad taps the top of his fist on the projector and his tone, when he speaks, is the one that makes D sit up and take notice. It's the 'I'm tired of this shit and it's ending right now' tone. His mom's the only one who fails to react to that tone, but then his mom's the exception to a lot of rules and right now, D'Argo's trying to parse how the blonde woman with the wide smile looks so much like her.

"I'd really appreciate it if you'd take down the display."

"Sir," the Helian laughs, a scratchy sound of sour amusement. "That holo is one of our best sellers--why would we take it down?"

"Because the guy who made it is an amoral, manipulative, opportunistic scumbag who plagiarizes other people's memories in his work."

The Helian shrugs, lashes sweeping low. "That's certainly not our problem. We sell information. That holo is a much requested commodity, and we have an arrangement with the gaming establishment down the street. It's a tie in to the re-release of several of Yoti's most popular games. There is no possible reason for us to take it down."

John glances back at D'Argo, who shrugs and tries to look unobtrusive.

"How about if you don't frelling take it down, I'll personally make sure that all the copies of those games end up as fuel for my Prowler?"

"I see..." The Helian yanks the window shut and presses the security button, his voice muffled by pulse-resistant plexipane. "Peacekeepers are no longer allowed to threaten innocent civilians simply because they can, sir."

"Frell."

Two guards appear out of the shadows, burly Sebaceans with rough sewn uniforms. His dad's hands are up before they get within handcuffing distance. He holds up a finger, keeping his hands far away from Winona, and slips his hand into his pocket. His eyes go wide, and he mouths, "Shit," then pulls out the confirmation chip for the hotel.

He tosses it to D'Argo. "I'll meet you back at the hotel in a couple of arns, D'. We'll go to the Simpa races after dinner."

D'Argo wants to protest, wants to stay and see how all of this shakes down, but John jerks his head and points. "Go on, son. No worries, I'll meet you in an arn."

He looks at the larger of the guards. "Can someone make sure my boy gets to our hotel?" They exchange glances and the smaller Sebacean nods, gestures D'Argo out the door.

 

He's gone through all of his homework, and can't concentrate on the Sprek game. He flips on the telecom, but all he gets is planetary news, a bad Sheyang family drama and scrambled porn. At least he thinks it's porn. With Xylian's, it's kind of hard to tell.

The room is small, and the streets outside are teeming. The viewers show all of the entrance ways to the different bars and restaurants and Simpa arenas sponsored by the hotel, and he's itchy to get out, to explore, to go somewhere beyond this room, but his dad will be royally pissed off if he gets back and D'Argo's not there.

He's also a little nervous about going out by himself, thirteen cycles of warnings ringing in his ears. The temptation to ignore the warnings is strong, the bright colors and the insistence of the viewer images calling out to him, but he doesn't want to cause any more stress for his dad. He's been on edge since mom got pregnant. D'Argo tries to still the niggle of fear that thoughts of the pregnancy stir in him. He keeps hearing his dad's voice ringing out, the accusation that his mom is risking her life. He doesn't want think about losing her, doesn't want to end up alone in the universe, just him and his dad.

D'Argo hangs out for another arn, sprawled on the floor, joggling the telecom dial every few microts to get flashes of the porn. A Xylian woman is kneeling on the floor, flat eyes wide, jaw unhinging when his dad bangs into the room. D'Argo flips off the telecom so fast that it zips the transmission, freezing it for a crystal clear microt before fading to black.

John looks at his son, looks at the telecom and barks out a laugh, then collapses into a chair, tossing the bookstore's broken projector onto the table. He's antsy, boot heel drumming into the soft carpet, fingers shifting his jacket around and tapping on his thigh. "You ready?"

"Yes! I'm starving."

John quirks his mouth. "Me too, kid."

D'Argo stands, grabs his jacket. "The arena on Xeiv Street has races starting in half an arn."

"Guess we can grab some food there."

D'Argo bounces on his heels, nods. "So are they gonna take down the display?" He wants to ask if he saw what he thought he saw, if he really knows those people in the holo, his folks, his Aunt Chi, sort of. But his dad doesn't much look like he's going to answer those sorts of questions.

John shrugs. "For now. Until they get a new projector. This one got...broken. Someone dropped it on the ground and managed to walk on it. Sucks for them, but..." He stands up. "C'mon kid, let's go watch some Simpa."

 

"Where you going so early, son?" His dad scratches and speaks through his yawn, "Thought we'd get some breakfast and start hitting the stores."

"Just down to the hotel arcade. They've got a few of the new Sprek modules already and I want to see what the new transformative levels are--"

"Just downstairs, then, okay? I'll shower and meet you down there in a few."

"Do you have any coin?"

"What, am I being mugged now?" He wanders toward the fresher, gesturing behind him. "In my pants. You can have five krindar--but it has to last you the whole trip."

D'Argo pauses with his hand already deep in a leathers pocket. "Do I have to use it for the shirts?"

"Shirts are on the coach."

D'Argo rifles through the clothing, creating a pile on the bed of receipts and tabs, hotel and dockpark key chips, spare change and a data crystal.

His dad picks the data crystal from the pile, swearing under his breath.

D' plucks out five krindars and heads out the door to the arcade.

He even walks up to an empty Sprek module and reaches into his pocket to touch his own mini-console. Kai-sen would die of envy if he came back with a new level or two loaded onto his unit.

The guy's name was Yoti. D'Argo recalls it as an attendant shuffles past, and he finds himself asking the bored Sebacean where the Yoti re-releases are.

His Aunt Chi has pale eyes like her grey clothes, but in the flash on the holo she had black eyes and colorful clothes. The Nebari woman painted on the side of the Yoti game module is curvy and perplexed, big black eyes and nothing at all like the one he knows, but he slips his krindar into the machine anyway. He has 1500 microts of play, easily enough to finish before his father's typical morning shower.

It's a boring game, really, not as engaging as Sprek and nothing like the fun stuff he usually does when Auntie Chi comes to visit. Everything is weird and distorted, even Papa Ryg, and the Luxan with the candy repels him. He doesn't even want to know if it's supposed to be the D'Argo who was his parents' friend.

He says, "I want out." When the booth reappears around him he sees he still has almost 800 microts left, so he hits the change button and pockets the few measly piltres it spits out.

The arcade is still pretty empty, his dad fiddling with the dead controls of an atmospheric flight simulator. He looks tired instead of angry, but D'Argo's spine straightens nonetheless.

"S'okay, son. I figured as much."

The idea that someone cared enough to steal his father's memories hadn't seemed quite real. Even after playing the game it still feels like a joke.

His dad scratches the side of his nose. "Did you get to the Moya levels?"

"There are Moya levels?" D'Argo turns to go back in but his dad lunges and grabs him by the jacket collar.

"When you're older. *Maybe*. Not now."

"The princess is mom, isn't she?"

"Your mom isn't in that game, son. It's just some confused thoughts about her, that's all."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Nope."

D'Argo shakes his head as if to clear water from his ears.

His dad wraps a hand around the back of his neck, slightly warmer than D'Argo's own skin, and gives him a slow shake. "You hungry?"

"Yeah."

Arm draped across the shoulders, his dad steers him out into the station proper.

 

The thing about living for the most part on a Leviathan who likes to explore the fringes of settled space is that it forces you to buy in bulk. Fortunately, most commerce stations are set up like catalog stores, so John can pick and choose the exact supplies he needs and then have a gross ton or two delivered straight to the shuttle pod.

"The medicine and hygiene parts of the list are done." John reads off from the datapad in his hand as they make their way toward yet another shopping district. "Which leaves clothing and equipment."

D'Argo perks up at the word 'equipment'. John doesn't have the heart to tell him it boils down to a sanitizer and a breast pump.

"What about toys?"

"We can get those, too."

"You don't have them on The List?" D' shoots him a look to let him know how painfully embarrassing he is, both by having a List and by it being less than comprehensive. "She needs stuff to play with."

"They don't really play too much for the first few monens, son, just eat sleep cry and poop, and not necessarily individually in that order."

"How many eema-covers did we just buy?"

"Enough for half a cycle, give or take a few bad days."

"So she needs toys, too. Don't be such a damned lame-ass."

John sighs. It's been months since Chi's last visit and he's still coming across the latest batch of swear words she'd seeded into his son's vocabulary. It's like an Easter egg hunt with turds, you never know when you'll stumble across one, but it's going have to be cleaned up regardless. This time it's English, bent and twisted underneath the Nebari and Sebacean accents: demmmd'laymiss.

And yeah, maybe he is being one. "Alright--toys, tech, then togs."

D' hoots like a Kai and ranges farther ahead.

 

Aeryn looks up from her reports on the 'pacification' of Keratos, the uneasy feeling of eyes on her leading her gaze straight to the table across from hers.

In her preoccupation, she'd sat in the crew section of the mess instead of at the tables set aside for allied-guests. Two girls and a boy, ensigns by their rank insignia, snicker and look away from her. Perhaps a little older than her own son, though she finds it hard to judge now that her experience is all tied up with one hybrid child, uncannily smart and empathetic, strangely coddled like a rare and delicate specimen.

The girls nudge each other and the boy smirks, offers a comment that makes one of them howl out loud. There's a gesture of hands spread out away from stomach and Aeryn realizes they're mocking her.

She turns her eyes back to the datapad beside her empty meal tray. The current report is from one of her staff on Keratos, a detailed rundown of the civilian casualties and the political reaction of the native government. The native militia lost every one of their decent pilots, but they still train and they've stuck to their stated mission parameters; they refuse to give the garrison an excuse to wipe them out completely. The program may survive yet, and after a few monens of peace she can begin agitating for a program on Seiris again.

She hasn't slept for nearly two days. Pressing duty and driving hunger had kept her awake by turns--it seems the less she sleeps the more she eats--but this last meal seems to be sticking with her for now. She rises to her feet and slips the datapad into the empty holster-pocket of her 'grannipannies'.

When she passes the ensigns' table one of them is brave enough to call out a taunt.

Aeryn stops. She walks to the table and studies them each in turn for a moment.

The boy is helpless with silent laughter, but he's not the issue. The girls challenge her with stares and Aeryn can see them in double vision; see their bravado and disgust, and the fear underneath. Old habits die hard, old thoughts walk like ghosts, and Aeryn is a contamination, a living manifestation of the old system brought low, cast out and for all they know begging for scraps, alien life swelling beneath her skin.

Pregnancy is an honorable duty that every female soldier expects to be assigned. Often it comes after a mission, when the regiment is on light duties while some members recover from injury. If you haven't sustained too many wounds, you're likely to spend the downtime pregnant.

Aeryn doesn't fit into that system, even though she wears the same uniform and is often accorded the same surface respect. Once they recognize who she is, and that what she's carrying *isn't* a comrade, the tone tends to change even as the words remain the same. On a xeno-carrier assigned to allied missions, only raw ensigns like these dare to say it aloud.

New regs or no, Aeryn is still considered defiled by her association with a lesser being; she *must* have been lesser herself, must have been stupid or damaged, no real Peacekeeper would let this happen, hence they are safe from the idea of change. But these girls are just now entering the system and they can feel that change is already happening, that nothing is as stable as they were told it would be. What's to keep this from happening to them, down the line? The more they mock Aeryn, the more distance they can put between them and her, the safer they feel.

Aeryn clarifies the question, her tone amused and far from cold. There's no way for her to reassure them, even if she wanted to. "What does *what* feel like?"

The girl in front of her pulls her shoulders forward and Aeryn leans down over the chair to close the distance. The other girl across the table glares even hotter, lip curling as she scoffs, "What does it feel like to be a brood mare for a dirty primitive?"

A primitive who can't seem to work a simple message queue, Aeryn adds to herself as she pretends to think on the question. The downside of their carefully-cultivated obscurity is that knowledge of her husband's few competencies requires high level security clearance.

"How does it feel?" Aeryn lays a hand on quiet girl's shoulder and hugs her close with one arm, smiling across the table at the scowling girl. The quiet one shirks away like D'Argo, which makes her laugh a little and angers the other girl even more. The boy is silent and still. She whispers into the quiet's girl's ear and then kisses her cheek.

She ruffles the angry girl's hair as she passes by, deftly avoiding the furious blows the girl throws to block her.

"Filthy tralk!"

There's a scuffle behind her as she keeps walking, the angry girl demanding, "What did she say?"

Aeryn shakes her head and chuckles to herself as she exits the mess, savoring the pallor that her words had sent through the quiet girl.

"She said it felt like the future."

The confrontation with the cadets settles something inside her, eases back her annoyance with John, tamps the hunger momentarily and she allows herself the luxury of a light workout and an arn in one of the flight sims before returning to her quarters to go over the last of the reports from Keratos. The uprising there will require an actual presence soon, but as long as she can get in touch with Rexa and her cohorts, Aeryn thinks she can talk them into a temporary cease fire before the Peacekeepers exert real firepower and raze the community.

She yawns as she keys in a final request for a comms link in the morning, sends an urgent report to the minister, then stretches until her back cracks. The girl kicks and swims, energized by the change of pace and Aeryn places her hand firmly to her belly.

"You liked the flight sim, didn't you? So did I. But we won't tell your father about that. He worries needlessly." He had in fact ordered her to remain grounded, orders seconded with a shrug by the med tech. She'd merely rolled her eyes at the med tech. For John, there'd been a lambasting on the hubris of giving her orders.

He'd been unfazed by her wrath, had simply apologized and called it a request.

He knows better, and while she is sympathetic to his fears there are limits to her patience. As a concession, she's been seeing the med tech every other day, monitoring her blood pressure and other vital signs on her own in the interim, and so far there have been no irregularities. Sitting on the bed, she checks her levels and enters them into the log. She showers and then slips between the cool sheets, wishing that John's warm, solid body was there to snug herself to.

They've spent much time apart in the last few cycles, something they'd agreed to for the sake of the work, but they both know that it comes with a price, with risk. She hadn't missed the way he'd said goodbye before she left for Keratos, the way each time she leaves his mouth sets harder even as he holds her, the way he prepares for her not to return.

Letting her go requires an act of faith that she hasn't until recently allowed herself to understand. But when he'd slung his bag over his shoulder a few days ago, convinced she was asleep, there'd been a look in his eye, a reluctance to leave even for a few days that had slid between her ribs and curled around her heart.

He was making his own sort of concession and perhaps it was time to negotiate a new set of terms, time to find a way to do the work with less distance, to involve him more actively, or to recruit other trainers.

They'd both been wary of the way that the different factions would react to being lead by a notorious outlaw, the harm that could come to him with that level of notoriety, the resentment on the part of the Peacekeepers, but she is growing tired of putting the universe's needs ahead of her family's. She loves the work, showing these people what freedom can mean, how to protect themselves. But her first obligation is to protect her family, to make certain that they're safe from the dangers of the universe.

Bringing in new people could mean giving up some of the autonomy they've built, but with another child to care for, she and John both will be harder pressed to shepherd revolutions, to train militias and farmers to form independent coalitions. It is time to explore some new options.

Her mind is running sharp and hot now and she wants to get up, to assess further details and logistics of her current mission, figure out how to start delegating some of that work, see if it's even a possibility she's willing to explore, but physical weariness eclipses that need. Instead she gets up, her awkward belly a dance of negotiation between her and the girl shifting within, and sits in front of the console to call up her will and testament.

She has no fear of death, only of what she will leave behind, and John has not said anything about losing her since that last fight. But she will hold true to her bargain, will leave him words, if that's what he needs. She banks her irritation over the lost message queue. There will be time enough to make him pay for that when he returns.

 

His dad hooked up the pod eons ago with speakers and while his Mom discourages putting on tunes while they fly, his dad seems to find some sort of calm in the speakers, in the Earth music. D's actively co-piloting on the return trip.

They'd gotten up early, neither of them getting much sleep after the Simpa races. That poor guy hadn't even known what was happening, his face broadcast on the holo screens, laughing and hollering about his victory right up until the point where his electric system shorted, sparking on his fuel source and the whole thing had blown, shutting down the races and starting a riot of panic. His dad had grabbed him, hustling the two of them out of the crowd with a ruthless efficiency, Winona drawn and a heavy hand wrapped around D'Argo's upper arm.

D'Argo keeps looping the explosion through his mind, the look on the Hokothian's face, the smell of fuel burning, of flesh and grease and metal. His stomach rolls and he hitches in his breath, trying to breath through the nausea.

"Go sit down in the back, D'." John's voice is steady and serious, concerned.

He waves his hand. "I'll be okay."

"D'Argo, go."

He pushes out of the seat, stumbling into the back to wedge himself up beside the ribs next to a small crate of toys, gulping down water.

The small speakers play one of his dad's favorite songs, but John doesn't hum or sing, doesn't turn up the volume.

"Think he had kids?" D' hears the tremolo in his own voice and grimaces at the weakness.

John turns to look at him. "Maybe."

D'Argo scrubs at his mouth. "I don't think I'm gonna puke."

"Drink some more water; vomit is a bitch to get out of biomech skin."

D'Argo snorts through his nose in an effort to stifle the giggle, caught between appalled and honestly amused, but he flashes back quickly to the races. "That why mom doesn't like going?"

"No, I think your Mom just finds any sort of competition that doesn't have real stakes to be sort of stupid. She isn't much interested in tech for tech's sake, no matter how cool. She may be a kick ass fighter jock, but she's still a girl."

"You gonna tell her what happened?"

"'Course. She's your mom. She's my wife, and she'd have both of our asses if we didn't let her know. She's gonna be pissed though."

"You didn't know that something like that would happen."

John shakes his head. "It's not that uncommon in the final tier of races, and I should've thought ahead. Just wanted us to get to do some guy stuff."

D'Argo fiddles with the lock on the toy crate, flips it open and pulls out the new blanket that lay on top. It's a dark rose color, embroidered with old Sebacean designs and words.

"Why..." he pauses, rubbing the cloth between his fingers, then stops. He knows there aren't a lot of satisfying answers to most questions that begin with why.

"Life's weird like that," John says softly, "Fate has a hellish sense of humor. That poor guy thought he was about to realize a dream, and maybe it was just crappy luck and maybe he took a shortcut in his wiring, made a bad call, I don't know. I wish I had an answer, D'. Awful is it sounds, mostly I just wish that we hadn't been there to see it. There are better ways to demonstrate that you've gotta appreciate the time you have, the people you love."

D'Argo clears his throat, feeling embarrassment flush his cheeks along with a strong desire to go ahead and say it anyway. He mumbles, "Love you dad."

"I love you too, son."

D's stumbling with exhaustion by the time they make it back to the carrier. It isn't all that late, but John can feel his own shoulders sag, weary and worn out.

He steers the boy down the steps and pays the levy for keeping the pod in the secure dock. No one waits for them other than the regular guards and soldiers on patrol. One of them will do a security check on the pod, make sure no contraband or illegal arms have been brought on board.

He decides at the last minute to get the blanket that D'Argo picked out for the baby, wanting to tell Aeryn the story about the old man who'd sold it to them, about blessing a baby with new fabric and old words, a little piece of Sebacean heritage that they can adopt, something unique to half of his children's genes, something inherent that isn't related to PK life or carrier born heritage.

He's surprised that she isn't there to meet them. He'd sent word ahead of their arrival time, but the chip in his pocket might have had larger repercussions than simply missing a mail call. The messages were weekens old, but the classification stamps and the content weren't anything he could transmit to her over open channels.

He's starving, pretty sure that they should both eat before crashing out, but he wants to see Aeryn, make sure that her absence is more about work than about something gone wrong, wants to work out the knots in his gut before he can think about eating.

He takes D'Argo's rucksack and sends him to the mess to grab a sandwich with the promise that he'll meet him there. At his quarters he keys in the code, hits the door release and steps inside. The lights are low and he lets his bag slide off his shoulder with a thump, tosses the blanket onto a chair and stands there for a few minutes, just looking at his wife.

She's sleeping like the dead, laying on her side on top of the covers, a throw over her hips, boots on the floor. She's in her underwear, round belly bare, the thin tank rucked halfway up to her breasts. Her hair is loose and her breath is steady, and he savors her, beautiful, fecund, quiet and alive, there in the bed with no trauma pending despite the tongue lashing he knows he's due for, and he can't resist. He goes to the bed, and sits down in the curve formed by her body, leans in to kiss her shoulder.

 

"Hey baby," he murmurs.

The words drift up from the depths of sleep. "Are you talking to her or me?"

"You. And the kidlet."

"And the kidlet you took with you?"

"Waiting for us in the mess."

Her skin is warmer than usual, but that's to be expected, her metabolism cruising at breakneck speed to bake the baby in record time. "Feeling rundown?"

"Didn't get much sleep last few days." She shifts her elbow under her head, opens one eye to see the worried look on his face. "The levels are all within range."

"Good. That's good."

"It's the only thing that's good." She stiffens into a stretch that vibrates her limbs and clears her eyes. "I've been busy putting out fires on Keratos."

He was going to tell her about the Simpa races, bring her up to speed on D'Argo's latest assignment in the Life Lesson Plan, but with those words he can feel the message chip in his pocket poking his leg. "Bad?"

She pulls the throw aside and gets to her feet. "We may lose their program."

Which puts all the other programs in jeopardy, planned or established. It goes beyond the handful of misdelivered reports on the chip. "What happened?"

"The details of the incidents aren't important." She pulls her uniform trousers up over her hips, the gathered flaps on each side of her belly bunched in her fists. "The problem was that I didn't know about them for weekens because those messages were intercepted."

"Shit."

She nods with a raised eyebrow.

He stands and digs the chip out, handing it to her.

She wraps her fingers around it, straightening her arm down. "That's what I thought."

"I downloaded them off the queue when I thought we were leaving soon, when you first came back. I didn't remember it was in the pocket of these pants until we were already at Helian." He rubs his forehead. "I looked the messages over as soon as I realized, but I figured transferring them over open channels was a bad idea."

He can feel the thrum inside of her, frustration and anger kept in tight check. With a touch or a word he could set her off, but her belly swells in his peripheral vision, bigger than when he left, nearly viable. She's so close to pulling this off, to coming through the other end of this safe and whole...he finds himself unable to take her anger personally, to fight back or protest. So what if they lose a program or two? If this is all the damage they take, it's nothing that can't be rebuilt.

"You've got what, fourteen programs under your belt now? They aren't going to fall like dominos because of one garrison commander with a bug up his ass. You of all people should know that the militia mindset isn't something you give up without a fight. Keratos will fight for their program, they just need guidance on the best way to do that."

"Which is why I've been on long-range comms for days pulling this out of the fire." She fastens her trousers, fingers flicking. "I sent Elti in my place, even though she isn't ready."

"She'll be fine." He slips her boots on, latching them for her and listening to her talk out four hard days at the shop.

"I need to train more people."

"That's a good idea."

"I told her to take the whole ground staff off of Seiris for now, there's no point in it if the program dies on Keratos. They should be there in three more days."

"When we're through here we'll head there. We'll get it back on track just like we did on Avenicia."

"By the time we leave here it will be done, there's no point."

He takes her hands and helps her lever up to stand, belly bulging between them. "Clean-up. Debriefing. Field promotions. Building your bigger staff."

She sighs. "You have a point."

"That's why you keep me around." He grabs her jacket and she lets him help her into the sleeves.

"Good thing you keep reminding me."

"We help each other, remember?"

 

It's times like this when D'Argo misses Papa Ryg the most. He pokes at the pieces of burhk shoot on his metal plate, fresh from the carrier's hydroponics and then cooked well past the point of being edible. The grayish green lumps look like flook dren, and he clicks to himself like a migrating flook, wishing there were someone at his table to get the joke.

A tray bangs down in front of him, but it's not his dad.

 

"They have Simpa races on Helian, now?"

"It's a minor circuit, that's how we got seats. That, and we were close to an exit."

"Doesn't that make it harder to flag down food vendors?" Trust her to find the food angle right now.

"Small price to pay when it gets you out of the 'drome ahead of the riot."

"You'd better be kidding."

"Wish I was."

 

"At least her first abomination sits in the right section."

D'Argo keeps his eyes on his own tray, his heart kicking. The mess is nearly deserted, and the three cadets arrayed around his table look like they've come from a late assignment of hard training.

The girl across from him is slightly bigger than he is, dark hair in a queue, tendrils at her forehead still wet from the showers. Her uniform jacket is open and her sneer bare. "Maybe he's mute."

At the edges of his vision he can see a boy behind him to the right and a girl behind him to the left; standard guard deploy. The girl guard is smaller than the boy, her face flushed. He wonders how long they've been watching him, how persistent they'll be.

"He has to talk a little." The leader shoves D'Argo's tray down the table, overcooked burhk slopping like dren. "He begged food, didn't he?"

 

"He's shaken, but he'll be okay. The riot was nothing, I don't think he batted an eyelash when the crowd came to a boil, but seeing that guy's racer crumple and fly apart, pieces and parts where a life was--he's not going to forget that. He wanted to know if the guy had family."

Aeryn is silent for half a corridor. "You know, if he ever finds out about the things we did, he might hate us."

"Maybe. But none of us would be here if we hadn't." John's gaze includes the personnel they pass as they round the corner. "And we've finally figured out how to build things instead of just destroying them. That counts, too."

Her words are thin and tired. "Even if they hit the wall and fly apart?"

He brushes the back of his hand against hers, mindful of the protocol. He can't wait until they're off this boat and he can kiss her in public again.

 

D'Argo tries to control his breathing. The leader presses her heel into the instep of his boot, just above where the metal reinforcement ends, hard leather and grommets biting through his sock into flesh.

"Tell me," Her tone is saccharine and conversational, "when is she due to shit that obscenity out?"

D'Argo nearly swoons with anger but the black only catches the edges of his vision. If you give them what they want, they win.

"Look he's all red." The boy snickers, seeking the leader's approval.

"Maybe you should take his fork, before he hurts himself."

D'Argo chucks it lightly across the table, where it clatters through the smear of burhk and skids into the leader's lap. That felt *really* good.

 

The rest of it happened in retrospect.

The boy laid a hand on his shoulder to do something, maybe pull him backward or steady him for a punch. Something tripped in D'Argo, like an overflow circuit rerouting a power surge.

Everything slowed. He curled his body down and saw the small girl's elbow swing through the space where he head had been. He used the leverage of the leader's boot on his foot to swing his body under the table.

He grabbed her calf, fingers hooking behind her knee, and crawled up her body, knocking them both to the floor behind her bench. He raked the back of his head on the table edge, but that only made him angrier.

According to the security logs, it lasted less than two hundred microts.

 

"Look, I'm sorry about the thing with the mail."

"You're sorry." Her tone makes it clear; that and a few credits will buy you some lukewarm raslak, buddy.

"Yeah, I'm sorry."

"The situation is under control, as much as it can be. Let's just drop it."

"But I feel bad."

"Good."

"I want to make it up to you."

Aeryn stops inside the doorway of the mess, the room nearly empty mid-shift. "I thought you said he was here?"

"I told him I'd meet him here--"

"Aeryn Sun?"

They turn, and are confronted by a mid-level security sergeant wearing a deck officer's badge.

"Yes, I am Aeryn Sun."

"If you'll come with me?"

"What's the problem, Sergeant?"

"Your...offspring...has been detained."

Their platoon instructor had finally pulled D'Argo from the girl, who landed a last loving boot to his crotch even as she was being cropped by her superior. It was a glancing blow, not as bad as a crush, but between that and the blood streaming from his nose the nausea nearly brought up what little dinner he'd eaten.

Her companions were eerily silent as they were all marched to the security office and sorted into cells. The others hadn't intervened in their fight, unless D'Argo didn't feel it. Maybe he hadn't. More likely they just wanted to watch, but their platoon instructor seemed to think that was almost as bad.

By the time he's shoved down onto the bench next to the girl he'd fought with, he's back in his right mind and starting to get scared. Luckily, he can read Peacekeeper expressions well enough to know she's just as terrified as he is under her scowl.

Good.

The cell is small, one slim hard bench along the wall and a grate for a floor. They stake out their corners and D'Argo tries not to choke on the blood welling from his nose.

It's a lot of blood, but she keeps staring at him so he stays cool, daubs his face with his shirt, pinches his nose and tilts his head back.

"You won't stop it that way."

He hawks and spits onto the grated floor.

"Ignore me if you want. You're the one gagging."

D' swallows against the queasiness, the iron taste in his mouth and throat made worse by the warmth of the room.

She leans into her corner, one boot on the bench, scraped fingers playing with the laces of her boot. They're probably in here together to learn how to play nice; maybe she's hoping to commute a few friendly fire demerits by offering aid. Maybe she wants to see him puke blood. Surveillance is assumed on a carrier, and she looks smart enough to realize that.

"If you were a real Sebacean you'd be better off leaning forward."

He shifts on the bench, eyeing her warily over the hand pinching his nostrils shut. Tilting forward. The blood drips to a stop as she watches, the only damage visible on her part being the tangles pulled out of her queue.

He remembers slamming her head into the deck over and over, but it's like someone else was doing it, like he was only watching. He notices she's resting her temple against the cool wall, pressing it there. Maybe she's injured as well. He hawks the last of it out of his throat, gelid before it slips through the grate. She's pale and beginning to sweat, her glare melting.

They're being punished with heat.

 

"And I used to think my dad was a hard-ass."

When they spend time on a xeno-carrier they try hard to work within the social norms, not to antagonize or flaunt their differences, to fit in as seamlessly as possible. The allied agreements are tenuous, an experiment on the part of the Peacekeepers, and restraint and professionalism while aboard are a small price to pay to foster goodwill among the grots and encourage the reforms by High Command. But it's a strain on John and D'Argo both, and now that one has cracked the other seems eager to follow suit.

 

Aeryn shoots him a look, as if asking him if he'd like to join his son in detention. "He should receive the same punishment as the cadet he was fighting with."

John leans over the corner of the sergeant's desk, whispering hard as the man pretends not to listen. "We both know who started it."

"Cadet Rentai," she reads off the incident report, avoiding the frank look of entreaty in her husband's eyes. "But on the vidlog D'Argo threw the first punch."

"He was surrounded and provoked, Aeryn. And after what happened this afternoon at Helian he does *not* need to spend a night in detention to top it all off."

"That's not the point." She keys in her acceptance code and presses her handprint on the flimsy, then slides it over to him. It's an exercise in diplomacy, granting the PKs provisional permission to handle the situation their way instead of throwing their weight around, demanding special treatment. Everything's a dance when they're working aboard a carrier, old grudges on each side ignored in favor of new goals, a 'mecksikan standoff' of discretion and negotiation, and Aeryn's position as a consultant to the Council, apart from the hierarchy yet sanctioned by it as an operative setting up colony militias, is both a passport and a burden.

Playing nice can be very difficult.

John's soft lips set hard as he looks at the vidlog display paused at the end of the fight, the cadet's vitriol seeping into the room and settling into the old stains of fear and distrust. "I want real-time access to the cell surveillance."

Aeryn turns to the sergeant, who takes the flimsy and adds a block of text. He programs a datapad and hands it to John, and it shows the same graphic as the monitor panel on the sergeant's desk.

John enters his code and sets his hand on the incident report, authorizing standard cadet penalty for friendly fire; no food or water for nine arns, class two heat punishment.

Locking the door to their quarters is a physical relief, and for a long moment Aeryn simply sits on the edge of the bed, wishing they were all back on Moya where they can breathe and be normal.

"Don't look so stunned, it was just a visit to the Principal's office." John tosses his jacket on the chair and sets the datapad display upright on the desk. "Maybe you're right, maybe he should see how the other half lives."

"I don't understand." She's been too soft on him, maybe, too lenient and coddling and now she can see how ill-prepared he is for the world outside of their family. She feels queasy. What if they've failed with him? And what about the girl she'd so blithely decided to keep, what if they ruin her as well? "He knows better than this."

"He's a good kid, usually, but he's still a kid, Aeryn. And I've heard some of the riding he's taken about us, about who he is, a hybrid, a throwback, half primitive and half traitor." John sits next to her on the bed. "Kids are jacked into the ugly undercurrents in any society, they absorb them despite our best intentions, and they can be as unmerciful as adults."

"He can't believe those things."

"No, I don't think he does. That's why he tried to wipe the deck with that cadet's face."

"He knows better!"

"I don't think he was thinking, Aeryn."

How could he be so smart and not think? What was there to think about in a situation like that, when he knows he needs to be on his best behaviour every time he leaves quarters? "He should have--there's no excuse for such childish outbursts--he's nearly an adult."

"Hardly!"

She whips around to stare at him, but he holds his ground with a calm that makes her question--does he still see a child where she sees someone a few cycles away from being responsible for himself?

This isn't the first time they've run into a wall over D'Argo, derailed by an assumption that the other person doesn't share and can barely comprehend. They've deliberately chosen to raise this boy as a civilian, to give him the family life that Aeryn didn't have, that she saw reflected so well in so many of her friends. John's the one who knows how that works, the one who keeps it running day to day.

"He's a kid, Aeryn." He catches her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. "A good kid who's starting to run into adult problems, and he's going to make mistakes as he learns. He's barely a teenager, not an ensign."

"I know that."

He takes a breath. "Think back to Moya, when you had to learn to live outside the system you grew up in here. We're his system, and he's starting to butt heads with the world outside of us."

"Literally."

"On occasion, yes. You heard the things that kid said to him, what she said to your face earlier. You can shake it off and so can I, but I can't blame him for his reaction even if I wished he could have handled it better."

Aeryn stares ahead of her, crossing her arms, refusing to give in to the tears that threaten or the despair that fuels them. "I expected more of him." She's expected more from all of them, maybe more than was possible, maybe peace is simply too hard to maintain for much of a stretch. Her own son threw the first punch.

"Aeryn, look at me." John pulls her arm free again, holding it firmly this time.

She does so, eyes hard even as water spills down from one of them.

"In a way, he was defending you. Not a good way, but that's where it comes from, his loyalty to us."

It's an odd concept, to think of that viciousness in the mess as coming from the same place as her own protectiveness toward him. That he feels love just as fiercely sometimes as she does, that he feels that way toward her, toward this family they're still building.

"He knows he screwed up. He'll take his punishment and he'll learn not to do it again. He's got years to get it right, Aeryn. It takes time. He can't just slot into a system and stay there, he has to find his own way, learn how to discipline himself, channel his drives. You can be a soldier at thirteen, but it takes a few more years to figure out how to be a man."

She brushes her cheek dry, wiping the wetness into the fabric of her uniform shirt and giving the side of her belly a scratch while she's at it.

John adds with a smile, "Or a woman."

She smirks in return, sniffing her nose clear. Caught between a teenager and her own hormones and now she's sniveling like an infant. "You didn't think I was an adult, when you met me?"

"I was talking about the kidlet." He grins. "But I think it's fair to say we were both out of our elements in the beginning, big fish from small ponds finding out we were really small fish in a big pond."

She props her boot on his leg. "You spend too much time in the pool."

"Yeah, well." He pops the fasteners and yanks off her boot, glancing at the surveillance display before chucking footwear to the floor. "Somebody's gotta play good cop to your bad, babe."

She rubs her forehead, not willing to hash this out in excruciating detail all night long. "John, he's the one who turned the argument into a fight."

 

The girl's face is pale, and her hands tremble as she sheds parts of her uniform, working with fierce determination to fold them and set them next to her in an orderly pile. She can barely hold her focus long enough to stick to the task, but he's hardly going to help her.

Sweat slicks his back and face, mingling with the blood and the snot. It's sort of cheerfully disgusting. He shucked his own outer layers as soon as he started to sweat and they lay in a pile, kicked casually to the side. His stomach growls and he wishes briefly that he'd eaten more of his dinner, but then he'd have probably puked it back up anyway, so maybe it was a wash.

He can feel the low thrum of anger at his parents for leaving him in here, at the unfairness of being punished for something that wasn't his fault, but he knows the rules and knows he broke them, and that there could have been worse punishments. His mom had said, succinctly, eyes glittering bright with anger that the Peacekeepers would have been well within their rights to ask the whole family to leave. It wasn't blame exactly, frustration and disappointment maybe, but it doesn't sting any less. He coughs again, spits out more blood and looks back at the girl.

"Why aren't you...?" she can't finish the sentence but the outrage is clear in her thready voice.

He shrugs, wipes sweat off his forehead.

"I'm not pure Sebacean. Heat delirium isn't a risk." He says it with a touch more glee than necessary but if they put his ass in here, they can't possibly expect him to be nice about it.

She grimaces and he presses his advantage.

"I'm gonna be hot and sweaty, but I'm not gonna be laying on the floor puking or shaking."

She hics, presses her body further to the wall.

"Guess being an abomination isn't all bad," he pushes, voice thick with the anger rising back up inside.

She barely manages a glare in return and he feels a thump in his gut, a rush of shame for taunting her. There's nothing he can do to help, they're just going to be waiting out the punishment. He swings his legs up on the bench, shoves his t-shirt under his head and tries to sleep.

 

It's a given that neither of them are going to sleep much tonight, but John's been flying most of the day, and she's the one who gave the final call for the punishment, so she takes the first shift with the surveillance display.

He's angry with her, upset that she's treating D'Argo like a soldier and not like a child, that she's turned her own son over to the PKs, even for a handful of arns, and perhaps that's part of her own wariness, her need to watch and make sure that her son is okay, that he takes his punishment with better grace than the ribbing that put him into the cell.

She's still irritated and anxious, and she knows some of it's from the pregnancy and the lack of sleep lately, but it doesn't make it go away, doesn't make her any less angry with the situations on Keratos and on the carrier.

She's still a bit angry with John, in return. So many small failures leading up to that mislaid mail chip, including the fact he hasn't been keeping up on the laundry. How long did that pair of leathers lay not a motra away from where she sits now, chip in the pocket? She sighs and lets it go, shifting her foot to lay against his warm calf as she listens to him breath with one ear, a speaker bud nestled in her other ear providing a sound feed for the display propped on her knees.

If something happens to her, she needs to know that her son will be able to care for himself, that he'll have the strength of will to press forward, to survive and thrive, to care for his father. The universe rarely follows the rules of fair play, and while she hates to see him in that cell, angry and bitter, locked up with a cadet full of rage and disgust born of the fear of change, Aeryn knows that she's made the right decision.

There are consequences for all actions, even those fueled by the best of motives. And she doesn't count the fight as the best of motives.

D'Argo's angry with her as well, his feelings hurt by what she's certain he sees as taking their side against him. Father and son both deal better with certainties, and it's a strange irony that having the two of them in her life has taught her how much of life exists in the grey, outside of the sharp contrast of black and white, right and wrong.

John sprawls on his stomach, sleeping heavily despite his protests that he'd stay up with her, that she needs the rest more than she does. The girl swims and flips, tiny amphibious feet kicking at the wall of Aeryn's belly and she keeps one hand on the lower curve of her stomach, the other against the datapad propped between her plumped breasts and stomach. John mumbles to himself, an old habit, face burrowing into the pillow and she looks over, touches his shoulder blade, drawing her fingers along the bone to rest on his spine. He's warm, skin smooth against her palm and she's very glad that he's there beside her, angry or not.

She sighs, sliding her foot up and down John's calf, remembering him saying that he still missed his own mother. It had startled her that her son could be so protective of *her*, so vicious against a mere verbal insult, but John knew, had understood immediately, as if it were a given for a boy to react that way. Perhaps it was, in a family. She knows what it would feel like to lose him, a piece of her heart ripped away, a spill of fear in her gut at the thought--that he'd feel the same way about her seems obvious now that John pointed it out. Underneath his embarrassment, underneath the shrug of her being 'slightly cooler' than other parents, she's a part of his heart as well. Even when she's away for weekens, even when he's petulant and pissed, no matter how old he gets.

She watches the surveillance, watches the cadet grow shakier, as afraid of the prospect of delirium as she is of the actuality of its effects. It's hard to take her eyes off the girl, especially when her son has flopped down on the bench, pretending to sleep like he's dead to the world. He's "playing possum", but it's a valiant effort at both staying out of trouble and saying frell you to the girl without antagonizing her openly.

It's near impossible to sleep in the first stages of heat punishment, bodily reactions so foreign and so frightening, chills and shakes and thoughts flitting, fleeting things and despite herself, Aeryn feels a twinge of sympathy for the girl. She remembers similar punishments, food and water withheld, back slick with stripes from the cording, eyes blackened and arm throbbing from being the victor in a fight with a competing squad.

She understands, supports the need for this particular punishment, even if she hates to see it carried out. However, she also understands the need for other forms of discipline. As carefully as she can, she slips off the bed and pads over the comms array, keys in the request to speak with the sergeant.

"They're unharmed, Sun," he says, gruff and annoyed at being bothered.

"I've agreed to my son's punishment," she says, "but I want something in return. We were invited here as guests, with the understanding that we would not be harassed as long as we stuck to protocol."

His reply is a grunt and a reluctant nod. He's a career sergeant, good at his job and likely stuck with it for the duration. She wonders how he came to be posted on a xeno-class carrier, and if he sees it as a demotion or an opportunity.

"I want restitution on our end as well," she says crisply. "D'Argo is enduring your form of punishment, Cadet Rentai will also be subject to our request."

"I hardly think that's--"

"The girl will not be harmed, sub-officer. We have more control over the children in the telacademy than you seem to have over your cadets. High Command is insistent that the Peacekeepers learn to work with the allies." She doesn't add that she has the authority to go over his head if she choose. He already knows this, and she's not looking to get his back up but to secure his cooperation.

He blinks ostentatiously, letting her finish in the time-honored tradition of a sergeant allowing a ranking officer to make an ass of him or herself with all due respect from his or her subordinate.

She shrugs a shoulder, seeks a tone as if they're comrades on guard duty. "Think of it as an opportunity to earn a few easy merits."

The sergeant blinks a few times more before he shakes his head ruefully, letting her know that he doesn't care about dren like that but is still willing to negotiate with her for the hell of it. Maybe he sees his posting as both a demotion *and* an opportunity. "What do you want, Officer Sun?"

She tells him, and he nods with a grim understanding.

 

The thirst is what gets to him as the arns go by. At least he hopes it's been arns.

The girl sprawls on the grate in her skivvies, grey tank top and undershorts revealing a collection of bruises in many colors. She's been in hard training for a while now, it seems, either punishment detail or an accelerated track. She's in a more coherent phase, neither whimpering nor talking to herself. The vomiting seems to have helped her some.

D'Argo doesn't say anything about the lingering smell. They've both had to piss into the waste funnel in the corner by this point, urgency overcoming embarrassment, so at least he's retained more control over himself than she has. He's also worried about her, though he'd never admit it to anyone.

This is what would happen to his mom, if she were in this room with him. There have been planets where he's had to go down with his dad, just the guys, Luxan trading colonies and such, and he knew that high temperatures were bad for full Sebaceans. But he's never seen the effects, never been forced to witness someone breaking down under heat that to him only feels cloying and balmy.

She shifts her position, limbs restless and marked from lying on the metal grate floor, and D'Argo knows by now it's the first sign of the shakes. "What's your name?"

He weighs his answer, pushing down the sympathy he's been indulging in. "Why do you care?"

"I don't. What's your name?"

"D'Argo Suncrichton."

She pulls her arms tight to her body, fighting the tremble in her muscles. "Cadet Padia Rentai--" a shiver breaks before she can list her regiment, and when it passes she opens her mouth and then closes it, train of thought lost.

"You can call me D'Argo."

"You can call me Cadet."

"Great." He wads his jacket back under his head, bracing for another round of yammering and retching from her side of the cell.

"Padia." It's forced out through shivers, as if she found something deep in a pocket and yanked it out. "I mean Padia."

He turns his head, watches her clutch at the grate. "Just remember where the waste funnel's at, okay?"

 

It occurs to him as the night wears on that what he's watching isn't really punishment. He's been punished--been given odious chores or had privileges taken away--but this goes far beyond punishment.

Well, for him, it's punishment. For her, it's akin to torture.

He enjoyed watching her suffer for a while, it soothed his sense of fairness to see her shiver and gag, to see her laid low because of what she'd said. Just 'cause she didn't know what a mother was, didn't mean she could say those things about his. She deserved to see him sail right through the heat with aplomb.

It got old. Now it's started to get scary.

Her cheeks are flushed from the dark smudges under her eyes down to her jaw line, creeping cherry down her arms and chest. She's due to throw up again but he can still smell the bile from last time, so he thinks she's probably out of ammo. She's collapsed on the grate, head pillowed on her boot, eyes glazed and open. Every once in a while, between shallow panting breaths, a ragged whine curls out of her, probably from her stomach. She hasn't spoken a word since she fell there after her dry heaves.

He's lost track of what time it might be, the thirst beating in his mouth with his heartbeat. He wonders if they aren't being watched after all. They can't be able to see how bad off she is; they'd have come, wouldn't they?

"Hey, Padia."

Nothing but the quick slight movement of her ribs.

"Hey, Cadet."

There's a twitch of her fingers.

D'Argo licks his lips, chapped and threatening to split in the middle. The room reeks sharp and sour, even worse as he crouches beside her. "Cadet, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Thr--" there's a catch as her throat sticks around the word. "Three."

"Do you remember my name?"

Twitch. "Wurgen Gaz."

He shakes her shoulder, skin tacky under his hand. "I'm the one from the mess, you remember my name?"

Her eyes squeeze shut as she pushes away.

"I'm your favorite obscenity, remember?"

The shivering starts up again, jerky and noticeably slow. Maybe he shouldn't have made her move.

"Not gonna leave you alone until you tell me my name."

"Frell off."

"Make me."

She pushes herself away from the floor, swaying as she sits, then falls against the wall, her back hitting the warm metal with a gong sound. A fresh break of sweat soaks through her shirt, underlining the small dollops of her breasts and darkening her pits. Her eyes look raw.

 

"You don't remember my name, do you?"

Her lips are as chapped as his, her sneer fearful. "You're Sun's hybrid."

"That I am." He sits cross-legged on the grate, somewhat mollified, but still wanting that last bit of reassurance. "I told you my name earlier, Padia, so what is it?"

Her jaw clenches. After a long moment she shakes her head.

Right. D'Argo doesn't know what they'll do, but he's less scared of that unknown than watching this get worse. At least with the Simpa pilot it happened in an instant and all he saw was shrapnel. "Fuck this shit."

 

His fists are swollen and numb but he keeps banging on the door, measured whacks punctuated by hollers that reverberate in the dead humidity of the cell.

The door finally slides open and he's the first to be hit by the wave of cold air. He has a microt to realize that his pants are soaked through with sweat before the water hits him high in the chest.

He sputters and gulps a few mouthfuls as the sergeant plays the hose over him before turning it on the girl.

The sergeant cuts off the water long enough to say, "Dismissed." Then he starts to wash down the cell as if they were already gone.

The girl looks like a drowned drannit, and D'Argo finds himself offering her a hand up. He's even more surprised when she takes it, when he has to brace to help haul her weight to her feet. They gather their clothes and boots, and leave a trail of sopping footprints toward the outer office.

By the chronometer, they've been let out half an arn early.

It's his turn to shiver as they tug their wet clothes on, but he notices she doesn't tie the laces of her boots, merely tucking the loose ends inside. She catches him looking, and her lip twitches.

He shrugs. Whatever. He just wants to get back to quarters.

"You're D'Argo Suncrichton."

He pauses, dripping by the door, jacket in hand. "And?"

He can't tell whether she's having a hard time talking or if she just doesn't know what to say. For a few microts it looks like she's going to be a treznot again but then she looks sleepy instead. "You're very loud."

"You're welcome."

His mother is sitting in one of the chairs outside of the door and when he comes through, trailing the cadet, her eyes widen slightly. He bites his lip, anger a bright sodium flare now that he's free. He'd expected to see his dad, see that hard set of his mouth at the PK attitudes, the punishment, be able to bitch a little about it, get some perspective.

Right now his mom looks like a Peacekeeper, hair bound tightly, face controlled, body in uniform even if her swollen belly hardly looks regulation. Padia lists to the left and he nearly knocks into her and they both stumble fumble and sway upright together, it's a weird and sort of creepy dance, wet clothes and sweat and bile and fear all racheting off of each other.

The girl lands her gaze on Aeryn and her fists clench, a low ugly noise in her throat. His mom stands up, tall and pregnant and imperious and all the fight goes out of the girl. Aeryn moves forward and catches the girl's arm, holding her up. She shakes her a little and Padia looks up. Aeryn eyes are hard, her gaze resting on the girl for so long that even D'Argo starts to get nervous. But the time allows Padia to gain back a little strength and when Aeryn lets go, she's steadier on her feet.

Aeryn's voice is soft and cutting when she speaks to the girl. "You're all so afraid of change, so afraid of the unknown. I understand that. But you will not take that fear out on my son. I am far less merciful than your superiors."

She shoots a sharp look at D'Argo. "And you will not violate the terms under which we stay here." Her mouth softens. "They're just words, D'Argo. Anger and hatred and fear, but we've raised you to look beyond what you see at first glance."

Aeryn goes back to her chair and awkwardly bends to retrieve her water jug. She hands it to D'Argo and nudges him out the door ahead of her. The sergeant comes through the other door and growls at the sight of the cadet still in the office. "You have a duty station, cadet!"

She salutes weakly, stumbles out of the room, pushing past D'Argo without rancor. They proceed slowly back to quarters, and he stops before Aeryn can open the door.

"You could have said something, kept us from being punished." He's surprised by the bitterness in his voice.

His mom pauses, hand near the door pad. "Yes."

"But you didn't. You let me stay in there with her, you let them torture her!"

Aeryn looks at him, eyes shrewd and sad. "She's living by these rules, and she knows the consequences of her actions, D'Argo. This is her world, her life. She knew what she was risking when she approached you."

"I didn't," he growls back. "She said… she...and it was still awful. She was sick on the floor, she could have died!"

Aeryn nods once. "She could have, though it was unlikely. There is no leeway in the Peacekeeper system, no room for shades of grey or interpretation."

He snarls and pushes past her, punching in the key code, dropping his stuff on the floor as he strips down, grabbing some sleep pants and slamming into the shower without saying anything to his dad who's sitting up in the bed, blurry eyed and ragged from sleep.

He showers, the water cool and clean on his body and he scrubs away the sweat, the stink of piss and vomit, the filth of being in the cell, of what the Peacekeepers do to their own.

When he emerges, shivering a little, roughing his hair with his towel, his dad's sitting on the edge of the bed in his shorts and his mom is nowhere to be seen.

"Save any water for the rest of us?"

D'Argo shrugs.

John opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, shaking his head. "PKs have their own system. You don't have to like it--hell, you don't even have to respect it--but being here means following certain rules and you know that."

D'Argo doesn't move, doesn't twitch, angry still.

"You were nice to that kid," his dad's tone changes, "you did the right thing when she was suffering."

He's a little shocked they saw that, disturbed that they'd been watching the surveillance as well. He clears his throat. "They die from heat--"

"No. " John shakes his head, sharp and aggressive. "They go into a living death, unconscious, unable to function, waiting for someone to have the mercy to kill them." He swallows hard, reaches down beside the bed and pulls the water jug up, holding it out for D'Argo. "Drink this, then get some sleep. We've got practice tonight after class. And no, you don't have to go to class today. No point in sending you there to sleep through it."

He mumbles a half-hearted thanks and takes the jug, stumbling to his bunk in a bleary haze of exhaustion and confusion.

 

His kid's still sullen and his wife is still putting out fires and he's been shut up in a classroom with a bunch of rowdy teenagers for the past five arns. He'd sell a body part for an evening spent watching football, drinking beer on a couch with some buddies or his dad. Or a little time on a boat, fishing and lounging, although that whole boat thing hadn't worked out so well last time, now that he thinks about it.

Point of fact, there are about eight gazillion places he'd rather be at this moment than in a reformed-kosher PK carrier with a bunch of hyperactive alien adolescents and a family doing the normal family dance of love and resentment. He's actively looking forward to pool time, to doing a few laps to vent some aggression, feeling the water on his body and against his muscles, coming home later and seeing if maybe Aeryn will let him work the kinks out of her back in exchange for the same.

He dismisses the Chem class early, having given up hope of getting them to titrate instead of making things explode, having confiscated a vial of a purple compound that he suspects is highly reactive, and another sludgy substance that he knows for a fact is a rough jelifan.

He heads for the pool and takes advantage of the quiet before practice, stroking along in a steady even pace and emptying his mind of the detritus, planning drills, planning what to say to his son and to Aeryn in an attempt at peace, love and understanding.

He's toweling off when the jumble of kids arrive, joking and shoving and pushing the boundaries of proper pool safety and etiquette. They dive in, shove each other, make it into the water one way or another, and while he's whistling through his fingers, distilling the chaos, he hears a sharp, angry throat clearing to his left.

He turns to see the cadet that had been in the cell with D'. Her chin is sharp, eyes dark and ferocious, young body clad in a regulation water-tactics training suit, like an Olympics one-piece cut low on the thigh. Black, of course.

He raises an eyebrow and she turns her mouth down, the words spitting out like acid, painful to her and to hear. "Cadet Padia Rentai, reporting for duty. I've been assigned here for the next two weekens."

He barks out a laugh, unable to stop himself. The absurdity smacks of one person, and he rescinds his mental offer to massage out the kinks in her back. Turnabout is fair play but he's not sure if it's the cadet or himself who's being turned about, maybe both, the cadet suffering a non-standard punishment while making John's job harder.

Sometimes there's an elegance to Aeryn's pettiness that he begrudgingly respects, even as it bugs the crap out of him.

He looks at the kids in the pool, many of whom have stilled their horseplay, looking for a sign of how they should behave. It's time to take control.

"Lane three," he says. "Follow the drills, pass on the left if you're faster than you're lane mates. You're responsible for timing yourself for rests and sprints. And you're welcome to stick around after practice is over for the games."

Padia sneers, but makes her way to lane three in silence and begins swimming with dogged determination.

 

When the cadet pushes Kai-sen out of the way to get ahead in the lane, D'Argo knows it's time to take some action. He's pausing in his thirty seconds, pacing his rest before the next set of drills and he sees Kai lose the balance, flounder and sputter for a microt in the cadet's wake.

He rolls his eyes and slaps the water, catching Kai's attention. D' points back with his thumb, jerking his head. Kai nods and they switch lanes. The bromine aches in D'Argo's raw sinuses and stings his bruises, but overall it's a relief to be back in the water even if he's still dealing with that drenhead girl. He's going to be behind, now, still finishing the drill when every one else is done, but he figures it's better than having the PK drown Kai and then get ambushed by the rest of the team outside the pool.

Telacademy kids may not be soldiers, may not even be all that fond of each other all of the time, but they protect their own.

Right now it's time for practice, his dad is pushing them hard today, and there's no time to speculate on why the girl is here corrupting herself with them. But later, there'll be plenty of time and plenty of speculation that he doesn't particularly want to answer. His parents aren't exactly novelties in the allied section or the telecademy, but they're offered a healthy respect, and many of the families keep their distance during social gatherings. His mom's Peacekeeper roots are well known, true, and she works closely with the PKs these days. He gets that people are sort of nervous around Aeryn.

But his dad, well, he doesn't get that, doesn't understand the wary looks, the way that it seems to take so long for people to get around to sitting down to talk with his dad, why there are only a few people in the universe who seem to not be weirded-out by John Crichton. That part's often easier on the xeno-carrier, the regulations imposed by the PKs binding all the adults together, and the other teachers and parents seem to like John well enough when they get to work with him face to face. They've even been eating with some the other families sometimes these days.

And now he's about to alienate himself and maybe his family by being nice to this pain in the ass cadet who barely deserves his mercy or his goodwill. He waits until she strokes in to flip and then grabs at her ankle. She kicks out and he misses her foot, lets her go and she surfaces, spluttering and ready to fight.

When she sees that it's him, she purses her mouth. "What do you want?"

Think she'd have a little more grace, but no, she has to be a fekkik even now.

"Look, you want to go around, you go around. You don't have to push anyone out of the way. It's not a competition, or a race. Not yet at least." He grins at her. It takes sheer force of will, but he holds it and finally she nods once.

"Besides, I'm faster than Kai-sen," he says. "Let's see if you can beat me."

 

John finally finds his wife in the shuttle pod, sitting on the deck amid opened crates. She's dumped the baby clothes out of their bags and is folding them neatly into a crate. The music is on soft, and she sits by a speaker with Johnny Cash rumbling toward the swell of her belly as she works. The 'dudes with guitars' mix, the same one he was listening to with D' on the way back from Helian.

She looks up at him, a stray lock of hair escaping from her braid tucked behind her ear. "I see you bought another milk pump. We already have one on Moya."

"Uhm, not exactly." He sits on the bench beside where she sits on the floor, leaning his shin against her shoulder. "I cannibalized that one for parts two years ago. Didn't think we'd need it."

She chuckles. "Considering our luck, I think I know who to blame now for falling pregnant."

"Fate's always there to take the cheap shot."

"I'd expect nothing less from her."

He smiles and palms her neck, massaging the muscles as she sorts through the baby things. They've gone through so much to get here, it still surprises him sometimes that they've come as far as they have. This is what they do now, piece things together, bolting ragged bits into something that can fly, swapping out parts as they go along. "How's the program?"

"Keratos is stable enough for now. But we'll likely be there for a few monens at least, after we leave here." She sets a stack of tiny shirts into the crate. "How was practice?"

"Speaking of cheap shots." He waits until she turns to look at his face, then sighs. "Are we even now?"

"Perhaps." A grin peeks before she wrestles it down. "Depends on how much trouble she gives you."

"I'd worry more about D'Argo if I were you. I think if they were both a few years older the sparks wouldn't just be violence. As it is, he'll be lucky to get off this ship without any more injuries."

"He needs to learn how to deal with those attitudes." Aeryn presses a hand to her belly, a wince flickering. "So does the cadet, for that matter."

"Been to the doc?"

"Dock?" Her hand rubs in a circle.

"Med station."

"Things are just stretching. These last weekens are the fastest growth." She waves a dismissing hand then braces on his knee, leveraging herself to her feet awkwardly. "She's already viable, if small."

He pulls her to stand between his knees. She slips her fingertips through the hair over his temple as he slides his hands under her uniform tunic and Lennon and Ono strum and clap through the speakers. Aboard a command carrier, listening to anti-war music as he feels movement beneath his palms.

Aeryn explains, "I just ate."

He catches her amused gaze, a rhythmic shudder under her skin as if the kidlet were dancing. "Are those hiccups?"

"Yes, she gets them about half an arn after I eat."

The kidlet is viable, just a few weekens away from golden brown and delicious. It doesn't feel quite real, still feels like leaving a flaming bag of dogshit on Fate's porch, still keeps him up a lot at night while she sleeps like the dead beside him and D' snores softly on his cadet cot.

But she's giving it this chance, and it's come this far. He relaxes enough to let himself hope that she might pull it off.

They'll be four.

 

 

John and his son lean against the headboard of the big platform bed, Aeryn sleeping between them with one boot still on. John wasn't sure if she was dressing or undressing when the nap hit, but he lets her sleep while he catches up on grading and D' works through a set of navigation problems.

Aeryn grunts and shifts, hand splaying on the taut surface of her belly. D'Argo lifts his elbow cautiously, then sets it back down on his mother's hip. "She looks like--what was that vegetable the Human guy cut up to look like Papa Ryg?"

"Who?"

"On that transmission from Earth."

"The guy at the end of the show?"

"Yeah."

"That was a pumpkin. People carved faces into them for a holiday."

"Punkin. Looks like she swallowed a punkin."

That she does.

"Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her." He'd begun on a riff of memory but the words catch him. He clears his throat and finishes the rhyme as a something close to a prayer. They're so close, only the birth standing between them and the finish line, and all he can do now is cheerlead and fret. "Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there her kept her very well."

His son eyes him with incredulous distaste, and the familiarity of the gesture is reassuring. The boy doesn't play with his Sprek game so much these days, his horizons broadened more than he'd bargained for lately. It's good to see he's still embarrassed by the old man, still just a kid with kid concerns.

"Finish your homework, son. Then we'll wake up your mom and take her out for Coneys."

 

"Nearly had to turn the hose on the cadet and Kai." He falls back onto the bed which now stinks irrevocably of bromine, his arms and legs sprawled out like he's ready to be sacrificed to the pool gods. "'Course, if I'd let 'em drown each other, it would have saved me one hell of a headache."

"And you say *I* provoke Kai-tyil." She murmurs distractedly, desperately trying to touch the ground with the flat of her hands, a futile effort most likely, but her back is aching, low and tight and sore and she's hoping the stretch will help, that the attempt will give her some relief.

As far as she's concerned, whatever trouble the cadet gives John is richly deserved, and perhaps she thinks, a tiny bemused sardonic voice prodding her on, the telacademy students will learn something about commitment and discipline from the sullen girl. She isn't counting on it, but it remains a possibility.

John raises his head from his position of martyrdom and leers at her arse, framed upside down between her bare knees. "You listening to me?"

"No," she says and then grunts, sighs, pushes herself back up to standing with a huff and sits back on the bed between his boots. "It's good to know I still have feet, if nothing else."

He chuckles, sitting up and sliding his legs outside hers. "Lean forward," he says, putting his hands on her hips.

She does, elbows propped on her knees and belly low between her thighs. At the first pressure of his strong fingers on the curve of her lower back she groans in pleasure.

"Told you I was useful." His fingers brush lightly against her upper back, a tease of possibility, something to think about for later.

Sex is an awkward strategy exercise in pillows and positions, but still a welcome distraction, something her body is still capable of, unlike touching her toes or putting on her boots by herself.

"Oh, I've never questioned your usefulness when it comes to servicing me." She looks over her shoulder, her raised eyebrow exploding into a grin as he slips delicate fingers up along her ribs and she shivers, tries to wriggle away.

"Servicing you, huh?"

She snorts in laughter, stroking his knee, thumb rubbing over the bone and fingers settling in the outside hollow of the joint. He returns to the task and to his story.

"That girl has quite a mouth on her, and Kai-sen's got a short fuse. Like host-being, like bud, I guess. They'd gotten to the shoving and hair-pulling stage and I'm on the side about to whistle when the boy stepped in, elbowed Padia back--and didn't get put into a half nelson, mind you--and he sent Kai-sen to a neutral corner."

"Mmm," she's paying attention now, but his thumb has just found one of the more persistent knots and she wants his whole focus on that spot. "They are capable of working things out themselves, although it may get ugly."

"Well," John pauses in thought, scooting up closer so his hips bump against hers, sliding his hands around to her thighs as she leans back against him. "There was some more arguing, and then he pushed her and she pushed him back and they stood there, facing off for a few microts."

The girl does a flutter roll, bopping against the wall of her abdomen and Aeryn moves his hand to feel it. He holds the swell of her belly, paused in his musings.

Maybe those two did learn something from the punishment, how to occupy the same space without hurting each other too badly. It's a start, and even with the occasional punch it's better than simply ignoring each other. "If they were older, they'd be recreation partners instead of uneasy, pissy allies."

He chuckles against her neck. "They're about two cycles and a bottle of cheap hooch away from taking this enemy/comrade thing to the horizontal mambo level."

"That long, you think?"

"Yeah, but only because of the cultural differences. It's like looking into a mirror, or a really bad VHS copy of our early days. They're shorter, still coasting on the whole 'opposite sex has cooties' idea--"

"Not at her age. Not at his either, or haven't you noticed the way he sometimes holds that Sprek console low on his lap for camouflage?"

"If you ever want to kill the boy, let him know you noticed that move."

"Why would he care if I know? I think it's cute."

"Yeah, I don't think he'd appreciate your take on the situation."

She shrugs, and his hands sweep around her sides to work her back muscles again, pushing her forward.

"I don't know, she's a huge pain in the ass but he acts like--he steps up to the plate around her, doesn't take any shit, but doesn't really punish her for being who she is, just calls her on her behavior and stays with her in her lane."

 

The cadet stays through the end of the second week, surprising John. She doesn't talk to the other kids really, but does stop sneering when any of them get near her. She comes to practice with a split lip once or twice, and he doesn't know if it's from his kids or the other cadets, and frankly doesn't want to get involved unless it looks like she's hurting worse. But she swims well with no other signs of damage and he lets it go, shaking his head as he watches his kid spark and fight with her. D's doing his own form of damage control, always sharing his lane with her. The learning curve always zings out of unexpected places, thwapping all of them upside the head whenever possible.

He sends the kids to the locker room at the end of the session, and sits on the edge of pool, feet in the water. He looks up at the sound of boots on the deck, unsurprised to see her at parade rest, spine straight, haughty expression in place.

"I'm finished with this rotation."

He gives her a salute. "Good luck, kid."

She glares, then seems to remember that it's no longer necessary. She nods curtly and stalks out, passing Aeryn on her way in.

His wife looks more than cranky, uncomfortable and awkward with the weight of the baby. The kidlet could come any time, and if Aeryn has her way, it'll be sooner than later. She has a hand planted in the curve of her back where it flares to meet her hip, a concession to the painful ache of tendons and muscles loosening.

She's a little rounder this time, a little softer, but still pretty much muscle and steel and cheekbones and baby. A whole lot of pregnant Sebacean with access to a weapon and he grins at her as she and Cadet Rentai pass each other. Aeryn's face slips from controlled seriousness to rueful amusement, then tightens as a wave of something passes. He pulls his feet out of the pool, but she waves him back.

"Heya, honey."

She grunts and carefully eases herself down onto the bench.

He flicks a little water at her, cocks his head. "Back acting up again?"

She nods, leaning forward between her knees with a wince.

"Strip," he says, sitting up suddenly.

"What?"

"Well, most of the other solutions we've found this go-around have involved water. Let's give it one more go?"

She snorts. "You just want me to get into that pool, don't you?"

He waggles his eyebrows.

"There isn't a suit big enough to fit."

"Kids are gone or changing; you can swim in your skivvies. I promise not to report you to the PK uniform patrol."

She turns her mouth down sourly, then holds up a foot. "Help me with my boots, then."

 

The water absorbs her weight, taking the pressure off her back, off her strained muscles and strained psyche and John's hands on her skin do the rest. She floats, swimming lazily and awkwardly for a few moments, then allows him to support her head and back, drifting while she kicks and stretches.

This is what it feels like for the girl, weightless support, warmth and comfort and love surrounding her, room to stretch, room to flip and kick. A cramp rolls through her belly and her back and she grunts, slides out of John's grip and stands. To be fair, the girl doesn't have much room to stretch anymore, curled tight within muscle that flexes more insistently than before.

The med techs had told her this morning that it could be a day or so yet before the labor proceeded beyond these early spasms, but now that the rest of her body is relaxed she can feel the insistence of the pain, the progression of it familiar and very welcome at this point.

She looks John in the eye here in the shallows, her belly between them, and puts her hand on his bare chest, feeling his heat and his muscle, the beat of his blood, the weight of his concern. He bends impulsively and kisses her, his mouth tasting like bromine, fingers banding tight on her shoulders and she slips her tongue along his lips, teasing him. Another cramp slides up her body and flexes her fingers against his skin. If she wants to eat and notify D'Argo before this starts in earnest, she needs to do both now.

"I think I should get dressed now," she mutters. "I'm starving."

He laughs and helps her out of the pool, smacking her wet arse as she heads to the changing room.

When she bends to retrieve her dry uniform trousers her water breaks, a warm gush and a gasp, a few moments lost as she breathes through an unmistakable contraction. She ducks under the shower before dressing, arms halfway through her sleeves when the next one swells up.

"Child," she admonishes between breaths, "give your mother a chance to put her shirt on, at least."

No time for a last quick meal, then. She shoves her feet into her unfastened boots and heads out.

 

The cadet is waiting in the corridor when they leave, flimsy in hand and expression carefully neutral. She offers the flimsy and a stylus to Aeryn. "I need you to sign off on my completed assignment."

Aeryn looks it over as she walks. "Crichton, did she fulfill her assigned duties?"

John hides the smirk, knowing that Aeryn isn't trying to mock the girl, just maybe show her that you don't have to be PK to take your job seriously. "Yeah, Sun, for the most part."

"Explain."

The cadet's attention bounces back and forth between them, indignant.

John notices that Aeryn's heading toward the med station, and his pulse ticks faster. The problem with being married to a stoic is that you can never tell when they're in serious pain; he reviews the last half arn with her and thinks maybe those weren't the twinges of her body stretching, but her body contracting.

She turns to him as she continues walking, and the profile of her belly looks lower. "Coach Crichton, your assessment?"

"She swam well but her sportsmanship could use work. She attended every lane swim but never stayed for the tag-game." He meets the sparkle in her eyes and his stomach flips. This is it, this is the final battle, the last chance to cheerlead and fret.

"You're going to demerit me for that stupid game?"

He turns to the cadet, having forgotten her in the space of a heartbeat. "We use regulation training tags, it's only the rules that are different--and three of the aquatic trainers have added it to their training modules. If you'll excuse us?"

He cradles Aeryn's elbow to urge her faster toward the med station, but five steps down the hallway the cadet charges up to them again. "I need my completion form so I can be reassigned!"

"Easy, Crichton. They already know I'm in labor." Aeryn turns John around so she can write using his back.

He turns. "What?"

"It started slow this morning. They told me to come back when it progressed farther."

"You've been in labor all morning?"

"Not enough to be concerned about; they said it could take days." She turns him around again and lays the flimsy on his back. "But my water broke in the changing room just now."

"Damn woman, you're going to kill me with worry yet."

"Pshhh."

"Don't 'pshhh' me in front of the cadet, Sun."

"Your turn to sign."

He plucks the flimsy from her hands but another contraction hits before he can get the stylus from her grip. The cadet's eyes are wide, her mouth small as she watches Aeryn lean a hand on the wall and bend into the spasm.

When it passes, John slaps the flimsy against the other wall and scrawls his signature with the stylus, freshly bent from her grip, then shoves both pieces at the cadet before hustling Aeryn down to the med station.

 

D'Argo looks up from the Sprek game to see Padia towering over him. "What do you want?"

"I need to take you to the crèche."

Kai-sen powers his console down and rises to his feet. "Stop making trouble."

D' can see how Kai-sen's going to grow up to be just like his dad, even now he's got the voice of authority when he decides to use it. "Easy, 'Sen, sit back in the shade here. We don't have to listen to her crap."

"Shut up and pay attention." She bends down to put her face in D'Argo's. "Sun's in labor, in the crèche. Coach sent me. So get off your eema and do your duty. Whatever that *is*, exactly."

D'Argo doesn't remember until later that he left his Sprek console plugged into 'Sen's.

She dogs his heels all the way to the docking bay. Maybe she thinks he needs a guard or something, but he has clearance to go into the shuttle pod and fire up the comm system.

He sends the message to Pilot and Moya, the cadet hovering around him all the while. He doesn't introduce her, doesn't ask her why she has nothing better to do. He has more important things to do right now, mom gave him a list of duties to run through whenever he got the call.

Dad's with her, she'll be fine. D'Argo focuses on his own job, doing his part to see the mission through.

 

They disarmed her at the crèche door and tried to shuffle her off alone to the delivery part of the nursery but she was adamant; you can take her pistol but not her human. The attendants relented, uneasy, and the games began.

 

D'Argo shoves clothes and equipment into duffels with a single-minded focus. Dad wanted them off the ship as soon as possible after, that was D's part of the mission while Mom was bringing his sister into the world.

Dad called it the getaway car. The most important part of any plan was the getaway. D' knows it's to keep him busy, give him something to do, but that's no reason not to do it well.

He's going have a sister. He's going meet her today. Dad was wrong about it, it's going to be fine.

Padia breaks him out of his daydream. "What's so funny?"

"I'm gonna to be a big brother."

She wrinkles her nose. "You're not that tall."

He knows the list, knows what's on it, what's necessary and what's busy work. He doesn't know why Padia is still here, face a squinting jumble of determination and uncertainty, the ever present sneer of distaste as careful as her uniform. He needs to go to the pharmacy, get things filled.

"I'll get bigger," he says, flicking his eyes at her. "Besides, it's about who you are, not your height."

She shrugs, indifferent.

"Genetic siblings," she says. "So what?"

He thinks for a few microts, wonders how to explain, how to take what he knows of the experience and translate it for her. She sighs with exaggeration as he pauses, snatches the list out of his hand.

"The med station will close soon, if you want to get these things you need to go now."

Their boots ring in time as he follows her through the station. She keeps her head high, doesn't look at him, but doesn't walk ahead of him either, weathers the stares of other cadets, the flat eyed gaze of superior officers who pause so she can pay obeisance when necessary.

"My duty officer assigned me to your family for the afternoon, after I cleared Coach's orders with him" she says, after snapping a smart salute to a young officer with dark eyes who looked her up and down, then nodded her dismissal. "To make certain that everything was facilitated." She licks her mouth, shifts into haughty disapproval "Just because Sun is having a squalling brat, there's special treatment."

The insult sounds like she's trying too hard, her heart not in it beyond keeping form or maybe proving she can still be a treznot if she wants. He's sick of playing nice with her if she's not going to return the effort.

"Lay off, Padia." He grabs her elbow and skips back when she rounds on him. "My parents never did anything to you. My mom was a Peacekeeper like you for frell's sake, she's a 'pure' Sebacean and your bosses trust her to wear a gun on your big, bad  
command carrier, so what's your frelling problem? If they can deal, you should be able to! You're not even an officer, you're just a frelling cadet."

She sets her jaw hard, stares at him, rolling on the balls of her feet like she wants to fight again, then settles into parade rest. "She's a..." she starts, snarling.

"She's a what?" he fires back. "A traitor, a deserter, what? C'mon, I've heard 'em all. Every frelling one of them and I think you're all full of shit. My mom helps people. She scares them pretty frelling frequently too, but she's busting her ass to help people and you guys need to give us a break."

"Sorry." she says gruffly. Not like she means it, but the word has it's own weight and he doubts he'll ever hear it again from her. Actually, he's pretty frelling sure he'll never see her again after today. It's a huge concession and he doesn't want to point it out. She knows what she's said, and she's looking less and less happy about it.

"She's gonna need a lot of help in life," he says. "She needs to learn the rules and the ropes, how to fight and fly and shoot and sneak extra krindars from dad and not eat the krawldar when it's mom's turn to cook and to turn her socks inside out so she doesn't have to do laundry all the frelling time. How to deal with dren-heads like you. And I get to teach her those things. That's pretty frelling cool."

Padia shrugs again, and they keep walking.

 

The contractions are hard now, stacked right on top of each other, going more quickly than the first time, her transition to pushing almost too fast for the techs to manage.

They help Aeryn into a type of chair with fixed grips, rock solid for her to brace against. The seat of the chair is a padded ledge for her eema, and the whole assembly is on a type of platform for the med techs to access her undercarriage.

They've put his wife on a lift for Pete's sake, but at least they've gotten used to John being there, shoulder to shoulder with the tech. He'd tried holding her hand and brushing her hair back, but she wants him right there to catch the kidlet, doesn't trust the techs enough to have them handle her daughter.

He waits for her to breathe out after this last one, then pops up with a hand on her knee. "I noticed you're wearing my socks."

She pants, catching her wind. "Last clean pair."

"Touche."

She grits her teeth, already pushing again.

It's close, so close.

 

Padia shadows D'Argo on his errands, from the docking bay to the allied quarters and back to the pod. She even sets a hand on the back of the little cart he sets their duffels on, helping him steer it through the corridors.

She doesn't leave his side until she's shown him to the nursery wing of the crèche and deposited him in a chair. Unlike every other seat on the carrier, this one's padded and comfortable. He sinks down, shrugging his jacket partly off his shoulders.

Her duty complete she nods tersely.

Leather sleeve flopping, he throws her a sloppy salute in reply.

She turns, pauses to shudder, and then walks out the door.

He doesn't realize he's going to go after her until he's out of his seat and he springs, catches her before she's halfway down the hall. He's breathless, more nervous than he's been since she first came to get him, since he first saw her looming over him, screaming for a fight.

"Hey," she slips out of his grip, faces him.

"Hey, what?"

"You...uh," he swallows. She's never going to go for it. "Never mind."

"No," she insists. "You ran all the way down here, what the frell did you want?"

He says it in a rush. "You should join the team, the Diving Hynerians. You're really fast."

She narrows her eyes. "What?"

"The swim team. Coach Ixa's pretty good, and there'll be new kids later in the cycle, maybe enough for a rival team."

"I'm not assigned to that duty anymore. And I don't want to swim with a bunch of alien brats that I don't know."

"Swam with me, with us, and it didn't kill you."

She raises a slim shoulder. "Not yet. Who knows what they'll find when I go for my next exam though?"

He's about to say something mean in protest when he catches on. "Was that...did you just make a joke?"

She rolls her eyes. "Aren't you needed in there?"

He is, and he isn't. But he needs to go back, wants to be close. In case. Wants to be there to meet the girl when she arrives.

"Yeah," he says to Padia, "yeah, I should go."

She turns on her heel and he watches her for a microt, then jogs back to the waiting room.

 

John's been here with Aeryn before, this moment when she whimpers, desperate and overwhelmed. He's right there, face in hers, catching her eyes and shouting whatever comes to mind to bring her back into focus. It's not much but it's all he can do, and when she rallies for that last round of pushing the giddiness makes him laugh even as she hollers through the pain of the child crowning.

Muscles bracing, hands supporting and reaching as he tangles with the tech in the close space, and he suddenly has a double handful of baby, curled and scrunched, hot with life.

Aeryn's laugh is soft as a sob, soft as the wax-coated skin of the girl, unfurling like a petal in his hands to howl, tongue flapping like a baby bird. She's traced with her mother's blood, some of it gathered in the beds of her nails like chipped polish.

 

Stranger's hands tie and cut the cord, and rub at the baby's skin with nubby cloth. He doesn't let her go, even as she pinks and quiets, even as more strange hands jostle around his to slip a fresh blanket between his palms and her skin.

Her head is pointy from the trip, her face a study in swollen puppy wrinkles, her eyes squinted against the light. He brings her up and Aeryn brushes her fingers over the fuzzy head, and the girl blinks and looks incredulous.

He's completely unprepared, buzzed and dizzy, wound up so tight about what could go wrong that the weight of this baby in his arms just floors him.

Sometimes the universe stops kicking you in the head, sometimes it kicks you in the pants instead.

She needs a name, something as big and daunting as she is, something as precious. He presses a kiss to her small wrinkled forehead and Aeryn laughs, "You should see her face when you do that."

 

The neonate tech mills about, nervous and disconcerted, trying to get the girl back from John but he's not having any of it, counting fingers and toes and ears and elbows and pronouncing them sound. The girl bellows, lungs healthy and taking in air, and he finally relents enough to hold her towards the hovering tech to be properly cleaned and suctioned and given all of the normal checks that come after an official birth, not one battle-triaged.

The rest comes just as quickly as the baby did, and another tech peels off to take the placenta away for whatever it is they do with such a thing. Aeryn is exhausted and spent, she wants to feed the girl, she wants to shower, and she wants to be somewhere comfortable. She wants to be flying toward Moya.

The last tech helps her out of the chair and into the nearby bathing trough where she strips completely to clean off the blood and fluids and sweat. Her limbs are shaky, no adrenaline to bolster her this time, and she keeps herself upright by force of will and the assistance of the tech.

"John," she says softly. He doesn't turn to respond, so she barks out his name.

He looks up at her, his face full of wonder and awe. He's cradling their girl, talking to her already, chattering like a trelkez, telling her all of things that lie ahead of her and Aeryn can't do anything more than laugh. The tech helps her dress, slipping a wad of padding into her grannipannies, and then helps her to a chair in the next room, John following in a daze.

Aeryn settles into the padded seat, which tilts back at an angle. "She needs to eat, as do I."

He grins and hands the girl over, and it stops her heart for a microt, this new tiny person who is part of their lives. A daughter, wrinkly and pink and so incredibly vulnerable to the universe around them. It's daunting.

John presses his mouth to her head, lips hot against her hairline, fingers strong and supple against her skin as she positions the girl, her tiny fists and tiny bow mouth rooting for the breast. She slips her nipple in and then grunts as her body follows suit and responds to the suck, letting down the first thick offerings that will thin out to real milk in a few days. The girl peeks through slitted eyes and grunts quietly back, resting a fist against the breast.

They know each other already, even though they've just met in person.

There's ferocity about her love for D'Argo that catches at her at times, something pulling and sharp in her belly like the cramps she feels now. It's an uncontrolled feeling, different from her love for John, which is a precious fierce thing on it's own, but her responsibilities are deeper. Looking at the tiny, helpless creature blinking and mewling as the nipple pops free, needing to eat, wanting to wail, startled and dazzled and wild until Aeryn seats it back in, her resolve tightens, strengthens and grows and she no longer wants to be in this place that represents an in between of past and present. She wants to be free with her family, to start conducting their future. "Where's D'Argo?"

"Waiting outside. He says everything's packed and ready to go."

"Everything official is already settled." She says to John softly, sinking back into the chair. "We can leave in three arns." The girl sighs, wheezing through her nose and Aeryn strokes the velvety cheek. "You'll get to fly again soon, after you meet your brother."

 

When John comes back he's bearing food, fresh clothing and their son. The girl has eaten greedily and Aeryn wants a real shower, needs to get the sweat out of her hair. She's ready to put her civilian clothes back on and take their children back to Moya. She successfully navigated the pregnancy and the birth, can see the fine lines on John's face easing, his ready, open smile a beacon for her.

She's going to be even stiffer tomorrow, the soreness of muscles healing and her body regrouping from the ordeal, but she will return quickly to fighting strength. It's inherent in her biology, in the modifications that the Eidelons made to the original stock, and the improvements the Peacekeepers had been breeding for generations. She's always been made for the work she does, defense and peace, building connections and making the universe a safer place to live; it just took her a while to find the right jobs, and it's probably going to take her even longer to be good at them all.

They need to go to Keratos as soon as possible, but she wants time with her son and daughter first. She's meeting John's bargain, survival and then relocation. He's been staying up nights finishing lesson plans in preparation for living with a newborn. There is nothing holding them back.

The girl squirms and squeaks, tiny face scrunched into discomfort as the rest of her bodily functions start to work. John laughs, recognizing the situation, and tugs D'Argo over to the baby who seems more surprised by her digestive tract than anything else in her view.

"Come meet your sister, D'. It's never to early to learn how to change diapers."

Remembering the contents of those first diapers, Aeryn snorts and passes the baby to John, reaching up to smooth the hair on her son's head and then touch the silky scalp of her daughter. John's eyes glitter suspiciously as he looks at the three of them. She takes the wrapped sandwich and the fresh clothing and makes her way to the connected fresher.

 

She doesn't look anything like he expected, nothing like the tadlings, or the Nebari, which come out looking pretty much like little versions of who they'll be, or the Luxans, bodies reddish orange and thick, who squall and wail with tiny buds on their heads that will grow into tankas. He's seen infants in the refugee camps, on the planets his mother has worked on, new siblings of the telecademy kids, but he's never seen a brand new infant that looked like, well, like something that hadn't finished cooking.

"She's really pink," he says, shuddering with the inanity. His dad snorts and takes her to the counter to put a fresh diaper on her.

"She'll stay pretty pink, but she'll get cuter." His dad works efficiently, dealing quickly with the dollop of what looks like old rotor grease and smells far worse. "First couple of days, weeks sometimes, they look like a combination of mole rat and little old man. Then one day, they're the most beautiful thing you've ever seen."

D'Argo has serious doubts about the beautiful part, but she is amazing. All those tiny little parts in miniature, her small rounded chest so incredibly delicate, tiny fists flailing and grasping.

He looks at her and realizes that she's part of it now, part of his life. It's no longer just him and his mom and his dad. She's here too, vulnerable and small, warm and alive and for the moment smelling sweet again.

His dad draws a huge finger over her forehead, stroking the damp fuzz of dark hair, the smooth slope of her belly, the curve of her flexing knee. D'Argo crowds in close to his dad as he tugs a tiny yellow hat onto the girl's head. She hics a cry, punches out with her feet as she wails and then stops suddenly, as if she realizes it's not all that bad.

"Just like Padia." D' snorts, "Kicks first, thinks about it later."

He reaches forward to touch the baby's arm, surprised by the smoothness of her skin, warm and damp but almost too soft to feel like you're really touching it.

"So, what's her name?" he asks, trying to catch her eye, pushing his head down towards her and getting a whiff of baby and ointment and cloth.

"Not yet," his dad says, wrapping her up like a gwiero, carefully supporting her head.

"Dude, dad. You haven't chosen yet?"

John grimaces at his son and D'Argo rolls his eyes.

"I didn't want to pick something without seeing her," he shoots back defensively.

"Mom is going to be so very pissed."

"Nah, she's pretty mellow post birth."

"Hah."

 

His dad sways side to side as the baby squirms and snugs into his chest. "Everything set to go?"

"Yeah, and Padia took me by the pharmacy on the way here. All the stuff for the narl and for mom are in my pack."

Dad grunts his approval.

His mom emerges from the fresher, walking stiffly but looking more like herself than she has in weekens. Her belly is still sort of swollen underneath her loose black shirt, but she's got leathers on again and her hair is pulled back in a tail. She picks up her long coat, in one slow motion sliding her arms into it and then laying a hand along the back of D'Argo's neck.

She asks him softly, "What do you think?"

"She's sort of funny looking, but dad says that'll pass." He grins at his mom, relief breaking in his chest. He'd thought he wasn't worried, turns out he was wrong.

"It'll pass," Mom chuckles, low and tight. "It takes a while," she murmurs, rubbing her cheek against his, "to get used to them."

She moves them closer to dad and the baby, and dad spares an arm to curl a hand around the back of mom's neck. "How you feelin?"

She nods. "Sore, tired, ready to be home."

His dad leans his forehead against hers, the narl between them and D'Argo still awkwardly caught in his mom's grip. She presses her other hand to dad's cheek, stretching out the microts as they breathe together in a weird little knot in the middle of the nursery, techs scuttling around them in a wide arc.

"We did it, baby," his dad murmurs, and they kiss, quick and breathless. D'Argo's cheeks flame and he looks away, embarrassment turning to indignation when he catches sight of a tech glaring at his parents.

D'Argo shrugs out of the family knot, remembering his manners but unwilling to let that glare go unchallenged. "Can I help you?"

"You need to register her," the tech says.

His mom turns, sending a withering glance at the woman. "She isn't a Peacekeeper, there's no need to register her."

The tech makes a noise of protest, but the rest of the staff has suddenly found other things to engross them, so her rebuttal never quite makes it out into words.

Mom takes the baby from dad, who slides his arm around her waist. "Let's go."

When the door slides shut behind them, his mom arches her brow. "You don't have a name yet, do you?"

D'Argo chortles as his dad protests. "C'mon, she'll have a name. I've chosen a name!"

D' knows he's lying, knows his mom knows he's lying, but no one contradicts him.

"I wanted to wait until we were off the carrier to name her anyway," his mom says with an exaggerated sigh.

They make their way slowly through the carrier to the pod. D' wanted to say goodbye to his friends, but he knew the deal, knew the drill and telacademy kids disappeared without notice on a regular basis, situations changing and destabilizing, crises springing up. It had been kind of nice, this protracted stay in one place, friends and classmates and the team, but he doubted it would be repeated anytime soon. Even so, when he spots Kai-tyil leaning against the shuttle pod he feels a twinge of resentment. Even now, Coach Ixa is running drills down at the pool.

"Kai-tyil," his dad reaches out to clasp hands in a modified Kai greeting, simplified for beings with half the usual number of arms, "Come to see us off?"

"I would have sent Sen but practice has already begun, and I admit," Kai-tyil raises his brow ridges, "I am somewhat curious about the new one. But first." He hands D'Argo the Sprek console that he'd left patched into Kai-sen's when Padia had come. "I believe your parent is not yet up to the task of winning you another."

"Thanks." D' put his hands to his chest and bows politely, wondering if Padia is at practice with the rest of the team and also knowing it's not a realistic question. It was just another duty for her. At least 'Sen won't have to put up with her.

His mom allows the Kai to peek into the sling while his dad runs the shuttle through pre-flight.

"I hear that for Sebaceans and the like, it takes two beings to make one, and yet it is only one who takes on the task of growing the bud. Is that why it is so small and helpless?"

"She'll grow." His mom winks at him as Kai-tyil pets his sister's head with a leery finger; maybe dad's right and she is mellow from the birth. "It takes all of us to help her do that."

"Seems like a great deal of work."

His mom shrugs. "And?"

 

Aeryn and the girl sleep for most of the trip out, bodies nested up in the back, some humming Hynerian lullabies coming out of the speakers. It's weird, watery music, filled with off-tone harmonies, beautiful and completely alien, but he doesn't want to shake either of his girls out of their slumber.

He gives it a week, maybe two before Aeryn insists they deal with Keratos, knows she'll tell Pilot immediately to head in that direction, but he wants some time with the two of them before real life starts back up, wants a little rest, some peace and quiet. Eventually, he sends D' back to sack out, the kid's head lolling on his shoulders like a doll. He hums along to the melody he can pick out as he flies, looking at the chatter on the comms registry, knowing Moya isn't all that far off, another arn, maybe three at the most.

He feels Aeryn's hand brushing his shoulder as she passes him, settling into the co-pilots chair, the baby nestled up against her in the black sling he'd picked up on Helian.

"Wanna drive?" he asks, half joking.

She shakes her head and they sit in silence for a few microts, surrounded by the stars.

"Thank you," she says, finally.

"Hmmm?"

"I know you were reluctant, scared... of the possibilities. And you gave us this chance, trusted my judgment and we were fine."

He doesn't have anything to say for the longest time, and then suddenly, he knows what he needs to tell her.

"You're all I've got, Aeryn." He tries to make it as matter of fact as possible. He's not looking for drama, just needs to say this to her. "You and D and now the pumpkin there. But you're it. Everything I've got in the universe worth having right here in this pod. We're all they have, all D has, all she's gonna have. It's important Aeryn. This family. We're important because were here, because we stick when things get hard, because we love each other. And she's the second most amazing thing I've ever seen out here, and I'd probably have the same doubts and fears. I'm not sorry that we won't be able to do this again, and maybe I'm glad that we did it this time, but..."

She touches his hand with her fingers, and the silence stretches. "I love you John Crichton," she says fiercely, voice harsh and ragged. He flips his palm over, captures her hand, squeezes hard enough to feel her bones shift.

"I love you too," he says quietly.

He flies them closer to home and the comms crackle when the move into Moya's range.

Pilot greets them, and John's gives their ETA. Half an arn tops. He flicks off the transmission and looks over at his wife, his beautiful new child snugged up to her full breasts, everything he'd ever wanted. Home, wife, two point three kids, a dog, maybe a pool. And this weird and wonderful and terrifying life they lead, they'd he'd die to keep, to protect.

He hums a few notes, looks at Aeryn.

"Picked a name," he says, mouth twitching.

"That's good," she says, stroking her daughters tiny pink fingers as they flex and curl in sleep, "because we were going to stay in this pod until you did."

He looks at her again, glances at D' crashed out in the pile of blankets. "I wish D'Argo were here," he whispers, surprised by how much that's still true.

Aeryn sets her jaw, nods sharply. "He'd have love her," she answers, voice absent of sentimentality, ringing purely in truth. "Her name, John," she says, softer this time, but steady and determined.

He grins, half sings his answer.

"All we are saying..."

Her eyes widen, horrified.

"No. Absolutely not."

He leans forward, stroking his hand along her arm, sliding his thumb over the baby's cheek.

"It's the best thing we'll ever do Aeryn, after these two. The only thing we've really got to offer them, so why not name it?"

She purses her mouth, looks down at her child and back up at him. She's still astonished, and horrified, and he can tell by the way her mouth is squirming in a rough imitation of their daughter's that she too is somewhat amused by the irony.

"All right," she says, sighing with exaggerated weight. "All right. You're the one she's going to hate in ten or twelve cycles."

He can hear the sound of his son's jaw cracking, blankets rustling as D' sits up. Both of them turn to look at their son, and he shrinks back his head. "What?" he says. "I didn't do anything?"

Aeryn snorts a laugh. "We chose a name."

He pushes himself up, disentangling himself from the blankets and padding over to look at them. The girl wakes up as well, stirring from the activity, cloudy clear eyes staring up at all of the faces over her.

"Does it suck?" D' asks warily, looking at his father.

"Nice," John says, swats at his son. "No, it does not suck. D', meet Peace."


End file.
